FFP Smart

Case Study: FFP Smart is a SaaS platform for venture capital research and startup evaluation. I led UX design across core product experiences currently in development.

Fact Finders Pro Platform
Fact Finders Pro Website
FFP Smart App
IOS & Google Play Store, Coming Soon

Role: Senior Lead UX/UI Designer: Team lead of 5 designers (2 senior, 3 junior)
Client: Fact Finders Pro
Product: FFP Smart (Desktop, iOS, Android)
Focus: SaaS Research & Data Platform for Venture Capital Investors

The Challenge: A Complex Product That Needed Structure and Clarity

Fact Finders Pro is a SaaS research platform designed to help venture capital investors analyze companies, uncover insights, and make informed decisions. The mission was strong, but the product experience lacked clarity, consistency, and scalable structure.

Users needed to move through complex datasets, research workflows, and questionnaires efficiently, while maintaining confidence in the accuracy and credibility of the platform.

At the same time, the product team was generating AI-driven UI outputs without structured requirements, creating friction between product, design, and engineering.

The challenge was to bring structure to both the product experience and the design process itself.

My Role: Leading Design and Scaling the Team

As Lead UX/UI Designer, I owned product design strategy and execution while leading a team of 5 designers. I guided sprint planning, design direction, and delivery across multiple workstreams.

Key contributions included:

Led sprint strategy and execution for a team of 5 designers, including 2 senior designers
Mentored 3 junior designers through structured design reviews and workflow improvements
Increased team output by 52% through better planning, alignment, and process clarity
Delivered production-ready Figma prototypes within one-week sprints, improving release velocity by 63%

Research & Findings:

Internal feedback sessions identified onboarding friction and inconsistencies across investor workflows and dashboard navigation
Users needed faster access to startup evaluation data, reporting tools, and portfolio insights within the platform
Early usability reviews revealed opportunities to simplify complex workflows and improve overall product clarity

My Approach: Bringing Structure to Product and Process

I focused on two parallel tracks: improving the user experience and fixing the way design work was being delivered. On the product side, I worked to simplify workflows, improve hierarchy, and create a more intuitive system for navigating research and data. On the process side, I shifted the team away from reverse-engineering AI-generated UI and toward structured, requirement-driven design.

Key objectives included:

Simplifying complex research workflows into clear, actionable steps
Creating stronger information architecture and visual hierarchy
Aligning product, design, and engineering around shared requirements
Bridging gaps between admin functionality and self-service user flows
Establishing scalable UI patterns for future growth

Design Process
My goal was to bring clarity, structure, and scalability to a complex product while supporting both the platform’s mission and the realities of the team's work. This required aligning stakeholders, defining workflows, and delivering production-ready design at speed.

(01) Stakeholder Alignment & Product Definition
I worked with product, engineering, and leadership to clarify goals, define expectations, and translate loosely defined or AI-generated concepts into structured requirements. This helped reduce ambiguity and ensured the team was aligned before moving into design.

(02) Workflow Audits & Gap Identification
I evaluated existing product flows across the platform, identifying inconsistencies between admin tools and self-service experiences. This surfaced missing states, unclear transitions, and opportunities to simplify how users moved through research and questionnaire workflows.

(03) Sketching & Wireframes
We created wireframes and user flow diagrams to organize complex interactions into clear, step-by-step experiences. This allowed the team to validate structure and logic early, before investing in high-fidelity design.

(04) UI Design & Systemization
We translated validated flows into high-fidelity UI, focusing on clarity, hierarchy, and trust. I introduced reusable components and consistent design patterns to support scalability and reduce friction across the platform.

(05) Rapid Iteration & Delivery

I delivered production-ready Figma prototypes within one-week sprints, enabling faster handoff to engineering and improving release velocity. This approach supported continuous iteration while keeping the team aligned and moving forward.

Design System

Led the development of a component-based design system for FFP Smart, establishing consistent UI patterns and supporting scalable design and development across core product workflows.

FFP Smart Design System

Investor Dashboard	Startup Dashboard	Tablet View
Startup Pillar Information Flow	Mobile Startup Dashboard Flow	Dataroom Upload Success Popup
Dataroom Mobile Flow	Onboarding Flow

The Results: Measurable Impact Across Product and Team

Key Product Area: Data Room & Research Workflow

One of the most impactful areas of work was the execution of the Data room and research workflow experience.

This included:

Structuring complex question sets into manageable, guided flows
Improving clarity of inputs, states, and progress indicators
Supporting both exploratory research and structured data entry
Aligning the experience with investor expectations and decision-making workflows

Reflection:
Leading Through Ambiguity

This project required balancing product design, team leadership, and process transformation at the same time. The biggest impact came not just from improving the UI, but from creating structure where none existed.

By aligning teams, simplifying workflows, and introducing scalable design patterns,
I helped turn a fragmented experience into a more cohesive and usable platform while scaling the design team’s effectiveness.