CASE STUDY
CRM for Safety Testing

UL is the largest and most trusted safety certification service used by companies like Apple and US federal agencies.
I designed key features and design patterns for the myUL® full-service client portal, which launched in 2019. I worked with another designer to establish a design system that ensures consistency across touch points.
Impact
Reduced development costs with a design system that ensures consistency across touch points;
Increased efficiency in accessing database records;
An enhanced user experience.
Role
Experience Designer
Timeline:
Mar - Jun 2017
Team
10 × stakeholders
2 × UX designers
1 × director of UX
5 × engineers
Year
2017
Process
Over the course of six months, we collaborated on-site in Northbrook, IL and remotely from our sunny Miami studio. The UX team at Wayfinder, a Miami-based design agency, led discovery workshops that included card sorting activities and whiteboarding sessions, which later helped us organize content and key functionalities.
We relied on extensive task analyses, experience maps, and sketching to better understand the challenges faced.

Challenge
Designing access to complex data from multiple sources, databases and directories for a 125-year-old enterprise with legacy tech systems and regulatory compliance constraints.
Users often …
complained about the fact that finding certification data was an obscure process that was manually intensive - think paper forms;
felt apprehensive about how digital access to data would affect their workflow.

Define
We worked closely with the team at UL and its customers to fully understand, identify opportunities, and define a plan to build a tool that could provide a quick and easy way to access safety certification data, quotes, orders, safety inspection reports, procedures, and global certifications.
Stakeholders involved in the design process consisted of UL's business analysts, subject matter experts, developers, and customer service representatives.

Develop
I was tasked with delivering several rounds of sketches, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes.
Through working sessions and interviews, we came up with a solution that enables access to complex data from multiple sources with a handful of simple, well-designed templates.

Prototype testing
Each concept was validated with users, through testing and iteration alongside intensive collaboration with the team at UL, we were able to narrow down the functionality that would be most useful for UL customers.

Collaboration with developers
We frequently requested feedback from developers as well. Design reviews where conducted remotely and facilitated by sharing design concepts using Marvel. Detailed wireframes, mockups and style-guides allowed the development team to focus on building everything properly. Design specifications where delivered to the development team using Zeplin.

Deliver
A responsive web-based solution that can be used by UL customers from anywhere, at anytime.
The desktop UI adapts beautifully to mobile devices, so that users everywhere can benefit – especially in countries where internet access is predominantly mobile.






The resulting myUL® Client Portal was launched in 2019 and marketed as a secure, full-service client portal and powerful knowledge bank for UL project files, product information, documents and services. See release statement.
Key results:
Reduced development costs with a design system that ensures consistency across touch points;
Increased efficiency in accessing database records;
An enhanced user experience.