This is the design story of ESG Labs, the AI platform I helped build in just 3 months to tackle the complex daily ESG compliance challenges facing large global companies.
I directed UX research and product design, navigating significant uncertainty to produce an initial version that delivered key results.
To begin, I conducted discovery sessions with stakeholders to pinpoint the core challenges for CSOs.
🎯 KPI: Reduced time spent on regulation discovery and increased accuracy of surfaced regulations.
🎯 KPI: Increase the number of potential compliance issues accurately flagged by the platform by 25%.
🎯 KPI: Achieved 4/5 average user satisfaction from post-beta surveys on platform usability and effectiveness.
🎯 KPI: Secure confirmation of willingness to pay from at least 60% of participating beta customers.
We mapped 19 key job steps in the user’s compliance journey. Within the area of ESG compliance, we pinpointed three job steps as the most relevant and urgent.
The relevant internal policies, regulations, and standards for each product/company in each market.
The relevant regulations and standards to understand how they impact your products/company in each market.
Of upcoming changes in the relevant regulations or standards.
JCABs (Jobs-to-be-Done Customer Advisory Boards) are structured interviews or workshops that allow us to gain a deep understanding of user needs and inform product development.
The product team working with the complex content we must design for
The major question was 'how might we' create an AI-powered ESG platform that simplifies compliance and empowers informed decision-making'
As the facilitator, I designed and ran this workshop to ensure we captured diverse perspectives from product, engineering, and QA.
Product team, Engineering team and QA. I was the facilitator.
To build a shared understanding of what a seamless experience looks like for a Compliance executive in a ESG world. Collaboratively explore conceptual ideas for the Compliance Executive journey.
Map out a best-in-class product that empowers ESG executives to confidently take the necessary steps to comply with ESG regulations, while prioritizing actions that have the most significant impact on their business
The team was split into three groups to make the session more manageable and give a chance for everyone to contribute to the session.
The team discussed and agreed on the app flow and the following approach:
The team also came up with a timeline of features we wanted to launch, from most critical with willingness to pay in mind at the beginning.
A traditional dashboard approach with rolled-up data and high-level summaries, emphasising charts and graphs.
A content-rich list focused on providing specific regulatory information and actionable details, prioritising text and structured data.
Beyond AI integration, our overall design approach was heavily influenced by the need for clarity and usability. This led us to adopt a content first strategy, prioritising clear and concise communication.
Balancing AI automation with human oversight for MVP compliance actions created initial tension. Engineering advocated for max AI efficiency, while Design, driven by user trust concerns, wanted robust human validation.
Through collaborative discussions, Engineering and Design combined a hybrid solution. AI now generates initial suggestions, but human experts retain control by validating these actions, effectively merging AI's speed with vital human oversight and building user confidence.
AI has changed how I interact with technology. While fundamental design principles remain true, the evolution of AI interfaces demand a new approach to user interaction.
Sample suggestions guide users by offering potential next steps in a conversation, presented as a list of 3-5 options.
Providing specific reference points helps guide the AI's response, offering a richer dataset for analysis than a single prompt.
Nudges provide in-app guidance, alerting users to AI features and how to utilize them effectively, especially during onboarding.
Citations enable users to trace information back to its origin, as AI aggregates data from multiple sources to provide comprehensive responses.
👉 View the collection of AI UX patterns
The final product delivers a user-friendly platform through clear visuals and intuitive design. It provides actionable insights, streamlines workflows, and allows for informed decision-making. The product was launched as a beta program with select customers, demonstrating their willingness to pay for its capabilities.
Welcome screen
User receive an email with the invitation to join Compliance Labs.
Data store location
Necessary to meet data protection regulations.
Company details
AI gathered publicly available information about the company.
Get started
AI identifies the relevant regulations and the app is ready to launch.
We analysed over 20 onboarding examples from product-led companies that excel at showing quick product value through straightforward web access.
The goal for the official Labs launch is to enable customers to start a trial directly from the website.
With the goal of enabling customers to start a trial directly from the website for the Labs launch, we developed the following intuitive four-step onboarding experience.
Designing the beta version without a dedicated brand style guide, as the product will be rebranded, required a flexible approach. We selected generic colours and styles to ensure alignment with the company brand and the typical aesthetic of the ESG compliance world.
Prior to piloting our new product with select customers, the team defined key metrics to measure our proposed streamlined compliance review process.
We created a Gainsight dashboard to track duration times for user actions (regulation searches, regulation assessments and status changes), session recording tool FullStory to review users interactions. We also gave customers a short questionnaire to complete.