Utilities and road maintenance companies depend on software that supports complex work under real pressure. Their teams plan thousands of interventions each week and must coordinate crews and equipment across wide areas. In this context, a clear SaaS user interface is an operational requirement.
The product we redesigned belonged to a small founder led company with about ten employees. They had built a strong backend and reached profitability, yet growth had stalled. New customers found the interface difficult to understand. Support teams spent time answering basic questions, and sales calls often turned into explanations of the UI. The product's legacy structure became a barrier at the moment the company needed to scale.
Developers and a graphic designer had worked for several years, but modules behaved differently and users had to scan multiple screens to make a single decision. Under peak load this created stress and repeated checking. As the company grew, decisions about features, workflows, and priorities involved founders, developers, sales, support, and key clients. Without a central UX framework, this multistakeholder governance created competing expectations and inconsistent decisions across modules.
This project is part of our continued work in enterprise SaaS and professional software, where evidence based UX, workflow optimization and system coherence shape operational efficiency.
Wir wendeten Dynamic Systems Design an, eine Methode, die Lösungen durch eingebettetes Experimentieren entwickelt, Spannungen zwischen lokaler Optimierung und Systemkohärenz auflöst und die Implementierung begleitet, bis Organisationen Eigenständigkeit erreichen.
Our UX design agency was asked to rebuild the product as an enterprise SaaS experience. A senior team worked for nine months across UX, UI, interaction design, research, product ownership, and project management. The goal was to create a practical, evidence based design that could support multi role workflows and strengthen their competitive position.
Evidence-Based Research
User Journey Mapping
Workflow Analyse
Interaktionsdesign
Usability Testing
UI Design
Design System
Implementation Partnership
During Sandbox Experiments, we examined how the existing SaaS UX design created friction in everyday work. We measured task duration, hesitation points, and recurring errors. Schedulers handled weather incidents, conflicting locations, overlapping jobs, and sudden shortages of available teams. These conditions require an interface that reduces cognitive load rather than amplifies it.
We focused on three high friction areas. First, information needed to be readable at a glance even when lists were long. Second, users needed better discoverability to find relevant jobs quickly. Third, the interface required clearer conflict indicators and visual semantics so users would not recheck assignments under stress.
These improvements were grounded in evidence based design rather than stylistic preference. They helped stabilise behaviour during peak periods and reduced dependence on short term memory. The result is a SaaS user interface that supports productivity and accuracy throughout the user journey.
Different roles rely on the same enterprise SaaS platform but do not share the same mental model. Through task analysis sessions and user interviews, we broke workflows into forty seven micro tasks across three primary personas.
Schedulers need speed, batch actions, and immediate visibility of team availability. Operations managers scan for exceptions and emerging risks across broader time horizons. Field technicians require clear task details, safety measures, and confirmations that work even with gloves or in bright sunlight.
An improvement that helps one role can create blind spots for another. A layout optimised for schedulers may hide the signals managers depend on. A structure that reassures technicians may obscure timing data for planners. By mapping micro tasks and using user journey mapping, we resolved these tensions through tension-driven reasoning and created workflows that support each role without compromising clarity for others.
These workflow conflicts reflected the structure of the organisation itself. Stakeholders had different priorities. For example, planners optimised for throughput, operations managers for stability, field teams for safety, and sales for clarity in demos. The redesign created a unified foundation that could satisfy these competing interests without introducing ambiguity for users.
This approach reflects a core principle of enterprise UX. A single interface must adapt to diverse patterns of attention, pace, and responsibility while keeping the system predictable for all users.
We used an evidence based approach that combined user research, behavioural science, benchmarking, and usability testing. Over three months, we conducted five stakeholder interviews and forty three individual user interviews across twenty one participants. We also carried out three in situ observation sessions to understand work under real time pressure.
Across four rounds of usability testing with prototypes, we examined scanning behaviour, hesitation points, and error patterns such as incorrect sequencing or duplicate assignments. Scientific research helped us interpret these findings. Concepts of colour semantics, cognitive load, and decision fatigue guided decisions about grouping, hierarchy, and timing of system feedback.
Benchmarking provided industry context for enterprise SaaS workflows and highlighted gaps in the legacy interface. This combination of evidence sources ensured that changes were grounded in observed behavior rather than assumptions. It also allowed us to observe behavior and refine improvements step by step and create predictable interaction design rules for the entire SaaS user interface.
Internal analytics showed clear gains after the redesign of the SaaS user interface. For example productivity improvements such as 62% faster job discovery, 83% faster job sequence optimisation or 58% faster weekly planning.
Clearer grouping and improved navigation reduced time spent locating and assigning work. Predictive indicators surfaced conflicts earlier, and AI assisted sequencing supported planners during peak load.
These improvements extended beyond productivity. Onboarding changed significantly. Previously, new users needed a one hour remote training session. After the redesign, onboarding could be done through an optional fifteen minute video. Around 90% of users began using the system without live instruction.
Support tickets dropped as well. "How can I" questions fell to about 5% of their previous level. "Can the system do X" questions dropped to roughly 60%. Sales conversions multiplied by four, and the company began winning clients four to five times larger than before. In formal tenders, total scores improved by 10-20% on account of the design changed (depending on the weighting of the tender criteria).
Field technicians work outdoors, often under time pressure, with interruptions and environmental constraints. Their needs differ from those of schedulers and managers. The interface must offer clarity without requiring precise interaction or long chains of navigation.
We designed a component for compliance and measures that surfaces required steps at the right moment. It highlights dependencies, shows safety requirements, and guides confirmations without overwhelming the user. In testing with technicians, this reduced uncertainty at task start and helped ensure procedures were followed consistently.
When jobs are delayed, partially completed, or affected by weather, the interface adapts without forcing long corrective paths. Exceptions are treated as normal parts of enterprise SaaS workflows rather than rare edge cases.
This approach supports both operational safety and emotional stability in challenging field conditions.
The previous interface had accumulated inconsistencies over several years. Different modules behaved differently, and users often had to click between multiple screens to confirm basic information. This created confusion for users and a high maintenance burden for developers.
To make implementation predictable, we translated the new interaction logic into a full component inventory. Every component included documented states, conditions, transitions, and examples of expected behaviour. We also documented conditional workflows for exceptions so developers could handle real edge cases without improvisation.
Throughout development, we held regular support sessions with the five person engineering team. This allowed us to clarify decisions early and reduce rework. The result was fewer regressions, clearer responsibilities, and lower QA effort. The team gained a coherent mental model of the SaaS UI design rather than a collection of disconnected screens.
The design system became the foundation for the entire enterprise SaaS experience. It contains sixty eight components with more than two hundred documented states and supports fifteen workflow types across planning, operations, reporting, and field coordination.
Spacing, colour semantics, and typography were defined to support large data sets, heavy planning boards, and real time updates. Grouping rules keep related information together, which reduces dependence on memory and supports fast scanning during peak workload.
For developers, the design system functions as a library of predictable patterns. Because each component follows the same structure, implementing new features requires less decision making and creates fewer inconsistencies. This reduces per feature development time and keeps long term maintainability under control.
The redesigned SaaS user interface strengthened the product across business, user, and technical dimensions. It supported larger clients, improved tender scores, and turned the interface into a visible advantage during demos. Prospective customers commented on its clarity, and the company began winning clients several times larger than before.
As a UI design agency and long term partner, we worked across nine months of redesign and provided two full years of support after delivery. During that time we clarified design decisions, adjusted components for new features, and helped developers maintain consistency.
The organization gained intangible resources: judgment about workflow optimization in professional software, shared product intuition about how multi-role systems should behave, and reasoning capability that allows teams to extend the interface without fragmenting it. The system maintains competitive position by supporting complex operational workflows with clarity and predictability, while competitors who prioritize feature accumulation over workflow coherence struggle to serve organizations working under real time pressure.
The result is an enterprise UX foundation that reduces cognitive load, supports complex workflows, and lowers error risk. For the client team, the product shifted from a source of frustration to a tool they could present with confidence and pride.