Before design work even kicked off, I identified a problem with the proposed SaaS subscription model that would heavily impact the user experience, design solutions, and engineering build time and maintenance. In the original model, clients had access to all brands and data we tracked on them in every market they purchased. But we were moving to a new model that included Audience as a core feature while making individual brands an add-on lever for upselling. The proposed base subscription was going to include only one brand, but much of the platform's value came from comparing multiple brands to gain context. This would have forced us to build and maintain two separate versions of the platform with different capabilities, which as the sole designer would have been unsustainable and made it significantly harder to demonstrate value to users. I documented the full impact and advocated to adjust the offering to two brands in the base model. After understanding the potential downside, the final pricing model was updated to include two brands (fwew!).

With that resolved, I audited the current architecture to understand what needed to change to align with the new SaaS subscription model. But the real foundation came from drawing on months of client conversations and platform work I'd already done. I had a backlog of notes and ideas that weren't in scope before, and this project finally gave me the opportunity to address them. The UX changes would span multiple repos, so I had to identify the biggest opportunities that would help unify the platform and address design drift without adding too much custom work so we could launch on time. The new design updated from horizontal to vertical navigation that would allow us to scale as we experimented and added new features, making them more visible. I grouped related workflows together that were previously disjointed and established consistent UI across the platform.