Work

Customer Experience & Product Transformation

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Building a CX & Insight-Led Product Capability

Building a CX & Insight-Led Product Capability

Adventus

Built and led Adventus’ first UX function, introducing a more structured, insight-led approach to product and customer experience. Aligned teams, connected customer insight to decisions, and improved activation, adoption, and consistency.

The Problem

Strong early traction—driven by global demos—wasn’t translating into meaningful product usage. Activation across key behaviours (logins, searches, applications) remained well below expectations, putting growth at risk.

The experience had evolved without a dedicated UX function, resulting in inconsistency across key journeys—particularly onboarding and product discovery—and no shared understanding of user needs or where friction existed.

Customer insight existed across frontline teams, Product, and Operations, but remained fragmented and wasn’t effectively shaping product decisions.

Key Challenges

  • Turning fragmented signals into clear, actionable direction to improve activation.

  • Aligning teams around a shared view of user needs and journey friction.

  • Establishing UX as a new function while delivering tangible product improvements.

  • Balancing foundational work with immediate impact on onboarding, discovery, and activation.

Approach

1. Reconnecting with users and frontline insight

Established a more structured Voice of Customer approach to understand where and why adoption was breaking down.

  • Launched surveys (300+ responses) and ongoing research via Adventus Huddle

  • Introduced Product Champions to capture and surface frontline insight

  • Identified core friction across onboarding and critical workflows

2. Aligning the organisation around customer needs

  • Synthesised research into clear, actionable problem statements

  • Facilitated cross-functional journey mapping workshops

  • Created shared ownership of customer pain points across product, marketing and operations

3. Establishing UX as a function

  • Built and led Adventus’ first UX team

  • Defined roles, practices and ways of working

  • Embedded UX into product delivery and elevated design into leadership, board and investor conversations

4. Defining product direction

  • Developed a Living UX Vision and 12–18 month visual roadmap

  • Aligned teams around improving conversion, activation and key workflows

  • Connected customer insight directly to prioritisation and product direction

5. Improving the product at scale

  • Introduced a scalable design system (Figma → Vue.js → Storybook)

  • Led redesign of critical workflows:

    • Recruiter Dashboard

    • Course Search & Filters

    • Shortlisting & Applications

    • Personalised Search Wizard

  • Embedded analytics to measure impact and inform iteration

My Role

Owned

Led

Contributed to

  • UX strategy and product direction (conversion, activation, core workflows)

  • Establishment and leadership of the UX function

  • Living UX Vision and visual roadmap

  • Voice of Customer approach (surveys, Adventus Huddle, Product Champions)

  • Cross-functional alignment and journey mapping

  • Design system strategy and implementation

  • Redesign of key product experiences

  • Product roadmap prioritisation

  • Collaboration with CPO, CTO and senior leadership

  • Investor presentations and board materials

  • Front-end architecture transition (Laravel → Vue.js)

  • Analytics instrumentation and performance measurement

Outcomes

  • Clear understanding of adoption challenges and how to address them

  • Alignment across teams around customer needs and priorities

  • Established a scalable UX practice and design system

  • Reduced friction across core workflows

  • Enabled measurable improvements in engagement and activation


Aligning teams around shared customer insight is what turns growth problems into solvable product and experience challenges.