Bringing design leadership to a fast and complex B2B transformation
UX CASE STUDY | DAMIEN LUTZ
Overview
About
Challenge:
Uplift a complex, inconsistent third-party safety platform that hindered reporting and other important processes, while guiding a team used to doing things ad hoc into a more rigorous, evidence-based design process.
Client:
Telstra
My Role:
Lead Product Designer
Key Outcomes
~20-30% faster incident reporting
A clearer, better-structured lodging experience cut the time staff spent reporting
~80% of classification automated
Freeing operational capacity that was previously manual
Evidence guided decisions
Rigorous user testing and documented decisions gave the team a way to settle design questions with data
A design challenge and a process one
Assisting a capable team lacking a structured design process
I joined an existing third-party safety platform (the DS Platform) as the only UX designer, embedded with a small team who designed and built its forms and processes directly in the tool, often at the same time.
It was a self-sufficient way of working, but one with no separate design step, no shared source of truth, and no testing. The work quickly became less about visual design and more about bringing structure to how decisions got made.
Forms had grown hard to use
Long, repetitious, poorly labelled, and lacking the guidance and readability treatment users needed
Design and build happened at once
Forms were designed and built directly in the platform at the same time, so concepts changed as they were made, with no separate design step to review
No single source of truth
With changes happening live in the tool, versions diverged quickly and it was hard to know which design was current
Decisions were settled by opinion
Without testing, design debates came down to individual views, and were slow to resolve
How I led
Although I was assigned as the sole designer, the team were the custodians of the platform, and they were the ones designing it as they built—and they continued to do so.
Rather than take design control, I adapted my role, embedding in participatory design, bringing usability, accessibility, and readability expertise, and introducing and facilitating rigorous user testing the team hadn’t had before.
Embedded participatory design
The platform team kept design ownership while I brought structure and expertise alongside them
Evidence-based decisions
I introduced rigorous user testing so design questions were settled by data, giving the team a depth of testing they hadn’t seen before
Tested the options
Where views differed, we tested the variations, so users decided the direction and no one had to win the argument
A shared source of truth
Because design happened live in the tool, I introduced a lightweight process: review, decide, document each decision as a checkable list, then build. It kept everyone aligned and made progress visible, and gave a clear way to resolve the design questions the team had been stuck on.
Inventing UI within a rigid platform
The DS Platform allowed little visual customisation. Working with the person who built the experiences, we creatively repurposed what the platform did allow, to invent the elements the forms were missing: call-out boxes, clearer hierarchy, and readability treatments.
The core projects
All four areas shared the same underlying problems, long and repetitious forms with poor labelling, little guidance, and no readability treatment.
Incidents & Hazards
Redesigned how staff lodge incidents, hazards, and support requests. Tested with ~20 users across 30 scenarios, iterated, then retested. Testing also gathered insight on team dashboards and notifications
Investigations
Mapped and redesigned the investigations flow, tested with experienced and first-time investigators. Recommendations reviewed with the platform team, with most implemented
Risk Management
Tested the Risk Profiles & Registers concept in person with 8 users for comprehension, usability, and readability. Insights informed an iteration, reviewed by UX and users before handing back to build
Audits & Findings
With limited runway, ran a UX heuristic review plus a feedback form to ~50 users, consolidating findings into a user-informed starting point for improvement
The main project—the Incidents & Hazards form
What it was
The core of the platform, how staff lodged incidents, hazards, and support requests, and how managers and the SSW team reviewed them.
The problems
Forms were long, complex, and repetitious, with clunky navigation, poor labelling, little guidance, and no visual treatment for readability. New or infrequent users found them especially hard to complete, which led to errors, drop-off, and avoidance of lodging.
Long and complex forms
Clunky, illogical navigation
Repetitious, poorly labelled inputs
Little guidance or readability treatment
My process
Grounded in the initial review and ideation workshops, I mapped every high-volume form and redesigned the lodging experience around eight improvements. Tested with ~20 users across 30 scenarios, iterated with the platform team, and tested again.
Grounded in existing insight
Built on the platform’s initial review and ideation workshops
Mapped every high-volume form
Reviewed the most-used journeys to find where they broke down
Redesigned around eight improvements
Reshaped the lodging experience end to end
Tested, iterated, tested again
~20 users across 30 scenarios, iterated with the platform team, then retested
What I delivered
The redesign reshaped the whole lodging experience, from how users start a report to how they’re guided through and confirmed at the end. Eight improvements addressed the length, complexity, and repetition that made the old forms hard to use.
A stepped, modular flow
Spread lodging across pages shown only when relevant, reducing input and giving a sense of progress
A report-only hazard form
A super-simplified experience for no-impact events with no injury or damage
Four clear event categories
Simplified the starting point into four top-tier categories
Reduced inputting
Combined questions, removed steps the platform could auto-detect, and reordered for less unnecessary input
Clearer, human-centred copy
Rewrote labels and guidance for comprehension, with consistent UI throughout
A more helpful confirmation
Clear next steps, links to the report, and where to get further help
A guided Manager Care experience
A new “Getting Started” step and more contextual information throughout the process
Style Guidance
Form best practices, UI choices, copy guidance, and accessibility, to support future forms
Lasting Outcomes
Main project results
The main project work resulted in ~20-30% faster incident reporting and ~80% of incident/hazard classification automated, freeing operational capacity.
~20-30% faster incident reporting
A clearer, better-structured lodging experience cut the time staff spent reporting
~80% of classification automated
Freeing operational capacity that was previously manual
An adaptive design approach created impact beyond the numbers
Beyond the measured gains in reporting time and classification, the lasting result was a way of working: testing, feedback, and iteration became part of the workflow, and design decisions were settled by evidence.
A measurable operational gain
Faster reporting and automated classification freed real capacity for staff and the SSW team
A repeatable design process
Version control, documented decisions, and user testing gave the team structure that outlasted the project
Rigorous testing, newly valued
The team experienced a depth of user testing they hadn’t before, and saw its worth in resolving hard design questions