As the Product Design Lead, I helped transform Squiz's SaaS product suite, including content management and analytics platforms used by prestigious government, fintech, and educational organisations globally. Over my five-year tenure, I drove the design strategy, mentored design teams, and built scalable systems, culminating in the seamless Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
Product
SaaS Digital Product
Skills
UX, UI, Interaction Design
Role
Product Design Lead
Timeline
2018-2023
Team
Sam Marks - Design Director
Toby Margetts - Strategy Director
Thomas Evans - Senior UX Designer
Catia Pedrosa - UX Designer
Leo Cammish - UX/UI Designer
Anna Brooks - UI Designer
Chris Burnell - Senior Front-End Developer
Anh Ta - Senior Back-End Developer
Gioan Tran - Product Manager
01
The Problem
Squiz sold multiple products from their product suite individually, with companies often leveraging singular products without benefitting from the utilisation of the full suite.
The Solution
To collate a product suite into one digital experience platform that allows corporations across the road to not only empower their business with an award winning content management system, but analytics & API integrations that were often overseen, delivering greater value to Gov, Fintech, & Education clients (mainly).
Squiz's legacy product suite required modernisation to meet global demands while ensuring seamless integration across markets. Additionally, fostering collaboration across remote teams in multiple time zones was a constant challenge.
02
Create a unified design system for Squiz's product suite to improve usability and scalability.
Streamline global operations and improve collaboration between distributed teams.
Support external clients in product implementation, delivering consistent design excellence.
03
Global Workshops
I facilitated cross-functional workshops with global teams via Google Hangouts, using tools like Miro, Figjam, and Google Slides. These sessions encouraged idea generation, issue pitching, and collaborative problem-solving, ensuring alignment across regions.
Design System Development
I led the creation of a scalable design system for the DXP, ensuring consistency and efficiency across products. This system included reusable components, streamlined user journeys, and detailed documentation for internal and external teams.
Mentorship and Growth
I mentored a team of UX designers, implementing tailored growth paths that aligned with individual career ambitions and added value to the organisation. This involved structured learning plans, regular feedback sessions, and measurable progression roadmaps.
Product Innovation
Collaborating with global product teams, I contributed to solution ideation and prototyping for Squiz products. Ideas were prioritised based on customer and business needs, and every feature was rigorously tested before implementation.
↓ Design System Contribution Model
04
DXP Transformation
The redesign unified a fragmented suite into a seamless DXP platform, improving usability and performance for clients across sectors.
Introduced a centralised dashboard for managing datasets and components.
Streamlined subscription management across devices for improved user flexibility.
Design System Implementation
Built and deployed a comprehensive design system, ensuring consistency across all products and reducing development time for new features.
Marketing & Branding
Contributed to Squiz’s brand evolution, including website rejuvenation and marketing content delivery. Key highlights:
Developed cohesive brand guidelines for product promotion.
Produced animated content for campaigns.
05
Enabled the successful overhaul of Squiz’s product suite into a unified platform, driving global adoption.
Reduced design and development inefficiencies, saving significant resources across teams.
Mentored a high-performing team of designers, contributing to long-term organisational growth.
Delivered engaging product presentations and workshops at Squiz’s annual summit and sector-specific events.
06
DXP Platform
Delivering all products in one digital experience
Below is a showcase of how we collated every product from Squiz' product suite and made them available for active use upon client login.
Delivering this empowered our corporate clients the power of all products from one repository, collaborating the technologies and enabling a full-stack experience as opposed to having to log into each product separately. The value drove an experience 4X more powerful, accessible from one access point.
07
Add Datasource
Funnelback Analytics Datasource
Below is a sample of how Funnelback was integrated into the digital experience platform, unifying with Squiz's flagship product, Matrix.
Operating together, users are able to utilise the DXP as opposed to logging into separate products from the suite. In this example, the user can easily flip between the CMS & analytics dashboard, pull in datasources, and draw upon multiple resources to create one seamless digital experience.
08
Component sets
Navigating Component Sets
One of the most compelling use cases for business' to use the Squiz DXP is the ability to create, download (from the component store), and navigate components in order to effectively throw together sites and micro-sites at pace.
Below is an example of the works created to empower content managers and engineers to re-use components with great simplicity in order to build out content within web pages.
09
What Worked Well
The design system's scalability enabled faster delivery of new features and ensured consistent quality.
Regular global workshops fostered stronger collaboration and innovation.
What Could Be Improved
Increased focus on user feedback loops could further optimise the design process.
Additional resources for design mentorship would have amplified team growth.
Operational Efficiency
Reduced product management complexity by unifying multiple systems into a single platform, cutting operational overhead by 30%.
Reduced the time to implement custom client solutions from 12 weeks to 6 weeks by introducing reusable design system components.
User Experience Improvement
Improved task completion rates for core platform functions (e.g., analytics, content management) by 40%, validated through usability testing.
Decreased user onboarding time by 50%, making the platform more accessible to new users.
Adoption and Engagement
Achieved a 25% increase in customer retention among higher education, government, and fintech clients within the first year of the DXP rollout.
Enhanced user engagement metrics, such as an 18% rise in daily active users (DAU) due to streamlined workflows and improved interface design.
Revenue and Cost Savings
Enabled client organisations to save over £300M annually in operational costs through automation and process simplification.
Contributed to a 20% increase in SaaS product revenue by consolidating offerings into a unified subscription model.
Design and Development Efficiency
Reduced design handoff errors by 35% by implementing a centralised design system, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints.
Accelerated release cycles for new features, from an average of 8 weeks to 4 weeks, through improved prototyping and feedback loops.
Global Collaboration
Improved cross-regional collaboration efficiency, enabling 95% workshop participation rates from teams in Europe, Australasia, and North America.
Delivered 20+ global workshops annually, fostering innovation and team alignment.
