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, establishing a more structured, insight-led approach to product and customer experience across a complex, multi-sided marketplace. Combined strategic leadership with hands-on execution to align teams, connect customer insight to decision-making, and improve activation, adoption and experience consistency.

The Problem

Strong early traction (high sign-ups driven by global demos) wasn’t translating into meaningful product usage. Key activation metrics—logins, searches, applications—were well below expectations, putting growth at risk.

Customer insight existed across frontline teams, product and operations, but was fragmented and not systematically connected to decision-making.

At the same time, there was:

  • No formal UX function

  • Inconsistent product experience

  • No shared understanding of user needs or key journey friction

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.