Opportunity
I was initially tasked with developing a feature to improve email template selection within Carta's Campaigns interface. What seemed like a straightforward request quickly revealed itself to be much more complex during my research phase.
Through user interviews and journey mapping, I discovered that template selection was actually a symptom of broader systemic usability issues affecting the entire platform. The research uncovered several critical problems:
Users struggled to locate and reuse past campaign content across fragmented interfaces
Ambiguous terminology around "Content Templates" created widespread confusion
Critical campaign metrics were scattered across multiple tabs
Template selection lacked visual previews, reducing user confidence
Routine tasks required excessive navigation through multiple interface layers
What I initially thought was a simple feature request had uncovered a fragmented Campaigns interface that was creating significant workflow inefficiencies and user frustration across the organization.
Design
Strategic Design Approach My solution centered on developing a unified information architecture accessible through sidebar navigation, eliminating the dependency on multi-tab workflows that were causing so much frustration. I established a clear visual hierarchy that prioritized frequently-accessed information, making sure users could find what they needed quickly.
Template System Redesign I replaced the ambiguous "Content Templates" with a more intuitive "Reusable Content" taxonomy. This involved:
Implementing visual preview functionality and robust search capabilities
Creating an organized content library with strategic tagging and categorization
Making templates searchable and visually identifiable to increase selection confidence
Operational Dashboard Development
The new dashboard prioritized essential campaign metrics like email status, performance data, and A/B test results. I enabled comprehensive campaign monitoring through a centralized interface and consolidated daily workflow requirements into a single-page experience, eliminating the need to jump between multiple areas of the platform.
Result
The early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with users expressing significant improvements in satisfaction and workflow efficiency. The immediate impact includes:
Improved content discoverability and reusability across teams
Enhanced template selection confidence through visual identification
Streamlined campaign monitoring and performance tracking
Beyond user experience improvements, this project influenced Carta's broader product roadmap and established a precedent for addressing systemic UX issues rather than surface-level symptoms. From a professional development perspective, it elevated my practice from interface design to strategic UX leadership, emphasizing systems thinking and evidence-based methodology.
The redesigned dashboard is currently in development with ongoing usability validation and plans for quantitative impact measurement upon full deployment.