We worked as one team across discovery, design, and development. The same people who ran the research were also involved in building the platform, which helped keep product decisions, workflow logic, and implementation aligned.

The project started with discovery. We cross-referenced four source documents, ran a full UX audit of the v1 prototype, and identified more than 30 prioritized issues across permissions, information architecture, and role-specific content.

We followed with user research: four task-based interviews with two project managers, one homeowner client, and one contractor. These interviews were synthesized into confirmed priorities and a validated backlog split.

Work then moved across four connected tracks:

• audit and analysis, including a permissions matrix review and capability-gap mapping;

• user research across all four user types;

• UX/UI design for Admin, Project Manager, Client, and Contractor experiences;

• development by the same team that ran discovery, with no handoff gap between product thinking and implementation.

One of the biggest product challenges was supporting four very different users in one platform. Each of them needed a different level of visibility and control.

We redesigned the platform around the actual responsibilities of each role:

• Admin: firm-wide visibility, user management, and full template control;

• Project Manager: access scoped to their own projects, with the ability to act on behalf of clients when delegated;

• Client: a jargon-free, mobile-friendly view with retail pricing only;

• Contractor: multi-project navigation with approved items only and no pricing exposed at the API level.

This role-based structure made the product feel less like a generic dashboard and more like project management software for interior designers working across clients, contractors, and internal teams.

The original dashboard showed status, but it did not clearly show what needed action. We redesigned it around a more practical question: what needs attention right now, and whose turn is it?

Overdue items surface prominently. Status labels tell users what to do, not just what state a project is in. At the project level, quick stats show the split between approved, pending, and revision-requested items.

This gave project managers better operational visibility across active residential design projects and reduced the need to piece together updates from email threads and exported files.

The platform needed to do more than store information. It had to support the actual approval loop that drives interior design workflow: propose selections, gather feedback, request revisions, and move approved items forward.

We built a structured review flow where clients can comment on and approve product selections in context instead of reviewing disconnected PDFs over email. This made selection management clearer for both clients and project managers and reduced ambiguity around what had been reviewed, approved, or sent back for revision.

Before the redesign, every contractor export required manual project manager work: remove pricing, filter approved items, and rename files with the latest date. That cleanup had to happen again for every request.

We rebuilt exports as dynamic outputs tied to the live approval state:

• contractor exports include approved items only;

• pricing is excluded;

• items are grouped by room;

• files are generated automatically instead of assembled manually.

Client-facing exports were also reframed as decision-focused outputs, showing pending items in a clearer to-do format. This improved version clarity and reduced the risk of teams working from outdated documents.

Every residential design project follows a similar loop: propose selections, get approvals, and hand work off to contractors. Without dedicated interior design project management software, that loop tends to run across emails, spreadsheets, and PDFs.

This platform replaced that fragmented process with a centralized workflow where ownership is explicit, manual work is automated, and each user role sees only what it needs. The role-based architecture, repeatable workflow structure, and platform foundation were also designed to support future growth without requiring a rebuild.