Co-led the product design for du's first-ever Sales Assistant App, taking it from zero to one.
In an ideal universe, there's a version of this where I stayed within the DesignOps and Leadership domain. Managing operations, ensuring delivery, clearing blockers, and left the product design to someone else. I understood what was at stake since every other designer was already in full capacity and the room for negotiations were little to none.
So I stepped in to become one of the founding product designers for a the Sales Assistant App. It is a tablet-based, agent-facing tool built to modernise the in-store experience and streamline assisted customer onboarding and plan management.
The discovery process
It started with a clean slate, the product owners and business team approached me with lists of features. But instead of designing screens straight away, I needed to find an answer in a more fundamental question: did Sales Agents actually need an app, or were we solving the wrong problem?
If it was slow, confusing, or bureaucratic, it wouldn't matter how good the rest of the transformation was.
The only way to find out was to experience as a customer firsthand. Here's how I approached it:
Visited a du store as a customer myself. I noted down every friction point firsthand, my own acquisition process took 4 hours just to buy a simple Prepaid Plan. The friction was felt by both customers and the agents who were both visibly drained, gridlocked by an outdated desktop system that made every transaction harder than it needed to be.
Led a synthesis workshop with Designers and Product Owners. I documented every pain points, brought it to the workshop, and broken down all the findings. We aligned that the process felt more like navigating a bureaucracy than delivering an seamless onboarding experience.
Translated the insights and requirements into an MVP. We concluded that the optimal experience for the agents are a tablet-based to gave them the mobility and speed they needed to onboard customers seamlessly.
Validated through multiple rounds of user testing. I collaborated with the UX Researcher and walked the solution through multiple rounds of user testing directly with the agents themselves, iterating until the experience meaningfully reduced onboarding time.
A short preview of how the Sales Assistant App was being crafted.
There's more to the story.
It's just locked behind an NDA. If you want the full picture, let's have a conversation!
Personal restrospective
I assumed ownership of this project deliberately — I had the right combination of context to do it justice. On one hand, I had in-depth contexts of the experience of the customer journey, and on another hand, I also have a background designing dashboards and SaaS products that translated directly into an agent-facing tool.
What we built has the potential to transform a 4-hour bureaucratic ordeal into a 30-minute onboarding experience. It's still under active development, so the full results are still unfolding. However the direction was clear. What started as a side initiative has already earned its place as a core digital channel, sitting alongside App and Web.
Let’s get in touch 🤙🏼
Always open to conversations! Whether it's about Design Operations, Design Leadership, UX/UI Design, or just exchanging notes on what's working and what isn't. Looking to bring on a Product Design, want to collaborate, or just want to geek out? Let's have a chat
Contact me