A cohesive product experience
Context & Challenge
Compliance software has a reputation for being painful to use, and not without reason. The domain is genuinely complex: trigger-based control workflows, multiple user roles with different permissions, and regulatory requirements that can’t be simplified away. Enterprise customers need audit-ready documentation at every step.
The design challenge wasn’t just usability. It was building an experience that gave users real confidence in a high-stakes context, without hiding the complexity they actually needed.
Key challenges included:
- Multiple user roles with different permissions and workflows (compliance managers, control owners, auditors)
- Complex trigger-based control logic that had to be clear without being oversimplified
- Designing for audit readiness without creating friction in day-to-day tasks
- Building scalable patterns that could support a growing feature set without fragmenting the experience
Role & scope
As the sole designer I owned the full product design process across discovery, strategy, UX and UI. I worked directly with product management and engineering throughout delivery, not just at handoff. Over seven years I defined the design patterns, built and maintained the design system, and contributed to product decisions at roadmap level.
My responsibilities included:
- Product discovery and UX research
- Journey mapping and workflow design
- UX/UI design and prototyping
- Design system development
- Cross-functional collaboration with product and engineering
The Process
Discovery & problem framing
To understand user needs I conducted interviews with product owners and compliance specialists, ran workshops to surface pain points in existing workflows, and analysed user behaviour across task types. The goal was to identify where the experience was creating friction and where the real design risk was hiding. In a domain this complex, the dangerous assumptions are rarely obvious up front.
Journey and workflow mapping
With trigger-based control logic and multiple user roles in play, I mapped core user journeys alongside trigger and control relationships, and plotted user goals against actual task complexity. This work was as much about alignment as it was about design. Getting stakeholders to agree on where the biggest UX risks were made the subsequent design decisions significantly easier to move through.
Prototyping and iteration
Working in Figma, I moved from wireframes to interactive prototypes through a regular cycle of design reviews with product and engineering. Validation happened with internal stakeholders rather than waiting for development to surface problems. The tight feedback loop meant we caught structural issues early and kept the product moving without costly late-stage rework.
Design systems and scalable patterns
To support long-term product growth I defined reusable UI patterns, built a shared Figma component library, and standardised interactions across workflows. This gave the team a shared design language and reduced design-to-dev friction as the product scope expanded.
Outcome
Impero has maintained a customer churn rate of under 2%, which in enterprise SaaS reflects both product quality and genuine user satisfaction. The platform holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating on G2, with 83% of reviewers giving it 5 stars and no reviews below 4. Many of the customers who joined in the early years are still on the platform today.
The product supported Impero’s Nasdaq listing in 2021 and its continued expansion into the DACH market, where it gained traction with some of Germany’s largest enterprises.
