Category:
Scalability & Post-Launch Optimization
Role:
Product Designer
Team:
Product designer, PO, CTO, 1xFE
Timeline:
4 weeks
Scalability is a common pitfall for early-stage startups, particularly during feature-heavy, revenue-generating growth phases. The urgent demand for fast delivery often leads to product scalability being overlooked, resulting in a platform that is neither user-friendly nor structurally sound over time.
While scoping a new feature to enable users to upload multiple documents in different file formats, I identified this exact problem: a critical UX flaw in the existing 'Attachment' flow. The incompatibility would have significantly hindered the new feature's potential, directly threatening key user needs and business goals in the competitive contract SaaS arena.
I used this moment of conflict as an opportunity for strategic correction. I designed a single, scalable solution that successfully reconciled the needs of both legacy functions and the new feature. This approach went beyond the immediate request, not only resolving years of accumulated technical debt but also ensuring the complete, on-time delivery of the critical new functionality.
IMPACT ————
CHALLENGES ————
My work was conducted under tight resource:
Velocity Block: Tight developer bandwidth and pressure to deliver quickly with a scalable system ("no time to reinvent the wheel").
Risk: Decisions were limited by very limited data and no user testing runway.
Eroding User Trust & Inconsistency: The continuous reinvention of element led to differing styles and behaviours across the platform. This created widespread inconsistency that degraded the user experience and accumulated design debt.
There are 4 key issues about the legacy "Attachment" that are unscalable:
Key conflicts driving scalability issues:
Check out the legacy "Attachments" flow below:
During the Discovery phase for the new multiple document upload feature, I proactively identified and escalated a major incompatibility with the existing, legacy 'Attachment' flow. Crucially, the current UI's button hierarchy for adding new attachments was highly likely to cause significant user confusion when combined with the new functionality.
SOLUTION SPACE ————
What I designed—
Key Design Interventions:
Strategic Renaming: The ambiguous "Attachment" was renamed to "Related Contract" and repositioned to its own tab, resolving the core semantic conflict and provided user clarity.
Scalable Document Component: I designed a brand new, atomic component with various instances to represent all document types, eliminating the need for reinvention and allowing for future expansion.
Enhanced Information Flow: I introduced a quick-peek preview function to allow users to instantly view document content, optimizing the workflow and reducing unnecessary clicks.
ITERATIONS ————
The rush to market meant no user testing. While not disastrous, the lack of validation led to immediate nervous feedback and quick rework. Below was one of the rework right after the release:
FURTHER ITERATIONS ————
The new "Related Contracts" tab successfully increased clarity for new users. Yet, the change created a new tradeoff: longtime users missed the quick "hack" they used to peek at content via the previous dropdown menu.
REFLECTION ————-
This project underscored the risks of building on an unscalable foundation. The pressure to move fast led us to prioritize short-term delivery over long-term sustainability, and while speed mattered, it quickly became clear that outdated functions were slowing development more than helping.
The real turning point was shifting focus from patching issues to solving the root scalability problem. By introducing a reusable component, I helped the team reduce complexity, unblock faster development, and prevent technical debt from piling up. Most importantly, it showed that scalability isn’t just a coding concern but a design decision that can shape how quickly teams learn, deliver, and grow.
