I helped Agentsly redesign and scale their design from scratch
Agentsly is a startup aiming to automate the work of insurance agents by building a CRM. I joined when the company was four months into development, and I've been helping them shape their vision from the ground up.
Role
Product Designer
Industry
SAAS, Healthcare, AI
Year
Dec 2024 - Ongoing
Problem Overview
❌ The app was bleeding because of poorly designed interface.
❌ Design iteration and handoff took longer because the file was a mess.
❌ The product couldn't scale because there was no foundation in place.
❌ Stakeholders couldn't properly visualize their vision.
Our internal tool called Prompt Refiner
My solution
🅿️ Created a design system from scratch.
🅿️ Conducted stakeholder interview to understand their product.
🅿️ Redesigned the old user interface to make it user friendly and scalable.
Our simple CRM to track leads
Results Overview
✅ Increased the speed of design handoff by 50%.
✅ Establish a design system that supports 3 products.
✅ Positive design feedback from stakeholder and users.
✅ Stakeholders collaboration with developers and designers improved.
Mobile tool to contact leads automatically
“Working with Rovic has been a game-changer. He deeply understands the product, cares about the user experience, and designs. His design system not only sped up development but helped prevent countless bugs. If you want to save time, money, and stress, hire a designer like Rovic. He’s worth his weight in gold”
Shawn Milner
Founder of Agentsly
I'm glad you made it here. I know you're curious about my approach. Now, drop the 7-second attention span of yours. I'll let you gaze into my process.
Background
I joined Agentsly when it was 4 months into the development as their third designer. Before I joined, they had a designers hired from Fiverr who led the designs; however, after a quick tour and observation, I immediately spotted several UX issues and visual inconsistencies.
After stakeholder interviews and exploration, I found out that they have 3 products: 2 web apps and 1 mobile application. I knew from the start they needed a good foundation to visualize this. In a nutshell, a design system to facelift the product.
Early design version of Agentsly before I joined
Motivations
From the start, I had two choices.
I could continue what the designers were doing before. Whiteboard sent to developer or design a page, get feedback from stakeholders, and send it to developers. Pretty normal, nothing fancy.
I could create a design system that supports the future of the product, I will start looking for reusable layouts, components, recurring UI patterns, and core user flows that can make a product scalable.
Since I was the designer left at the company and the company was in its early stages, it was easy to make a decision. I had a great discussion with the stakeholder. Aside from a product redesign, I also recommend creating a design system from scratch.
I still consider that for an early-stage startup, establishing a design system is risky, especially if the stakeholders are still in exploration and working towards product-market fit and exploring suitable features for users.
At Agentsly, however, this is different. I'm convinced that investing in a design system plus a product redesign will help them scale, explore, and solve user problems faster.
Here are a few reasons why creating a design system was a smart choice for us:
As a developer before, efficiency and reusability of codes help to lessen bugs and speed up workflow at an early stage. With that in mind, it should also reflect in the designs.
They have 3 products to build. There are overlapping components that can be reused throughout the ecosystem (text fields, radio buttons, modals, and more). Also, specified fonts, icons, colors, and typography will speed up the iteration and development greatly.
The stakeholder was trying to communicate to the developer through a whiteboard, which cost them a lot of time. A good file and a handful of premade components will help us ideate and solve faster.
Predictable user interface, aesthetics, and simplicity. From experience, it is easy to create if a well-established design system is in place.
Goals
From the experience I had when I was an intern building mobile applications. I learned the hard way that creating a design system right at the beginning would save us a headache when iterating in the future. It's a powerful system for developers, designers, and key people; it allows them to consistently iterate on the design product-wide experience.
At Agenstly, I had three goals:
1. We want to iterate fast on the designs so we can test them and build them.
2. We want the designs to be consistent, reusable, and predictable for users all throughout 3 products.
3. We want to redesign the product, improve usability issues, and scale it from there.
I've learned from Jose Torre, a staff designer from Shopify. We don't want to build a perfect design system as it is counterproductive. The design system is changing as the product needs. It should be a fluid and never-ending process. If the design system is not growing, so is your product.