Adding design value to a technical solution.
When Liberis Finance was growing fast, their onboarding quote journey felt transactional, engineered for delivery rather than designed for real people. My role was to bring a human-first lens: simplifying the flow, reducing friction, boosting conversions, and cutting down call-handling time. At the same time, I helped the company embed design thinking across the business and start thinking about building an in-house design capability.
As the design expert within a 120-person company, I led the end-to-end redesign, from research to conceptualization, wire framing, and prototyping, while also guiding internal teams on what good design could look like in a heavily operational company. The sticky challenge of this work was in the rationalisation of the question set due to red tape around data collection and handling of peoples details.
Outcomes
• 31% increase in end-to-end online completion
• A white-label quote experience usable across partner merchant sites
• Contributed to the business case in expanding business merchant partners from 5 to 8
• Provided the foundation for new product & platform features in 2023
• Secured ongoing design buy-in, helping grow a user-focused design function internally
My Role
• Led cross-functional ideation and journey mapping workshops across Product, Marketing, Fulfilment, Data, and Tech teams
• Synthesized five varied merchant user flows into a single, streamlined master flow
• Defined user flows, wireframes, and clickable prototypes to guide internal teams
• Embedded user research and data into design decisions to improve usability and reduce drop-offs
• Guided teams through process refinements and delivered actionable recommendations for future platform enhancements
Original Quote Journey
I spearheaded the project by conducting competitor desk research to uncover differentiators, our key selling points and strategies we could use to attract more business owner customers. This analysis revealed strengths in, offering cash to defined SME's, and weaknesses in speed, clarity, and accessibility, especially in us not being providing instant quotes fast against the industry standards.
I reviewed 6–7 customer calls with call handlers and internal documentation to uncover pain points, confusion, and unmet needs.
Key insight: Many customers dropped off at the login stage, unable to remember their merchant numbers, and the question flow often caused frustration.
I then conducted journey mapping across all five merchant partner sites, highlighting inconsistencies and friction in the user experience. From these sessions, we aligned on an overall unified and consistent, flow that would be white labelled and implemented with associated branding/UI later.
Listening to customer calls & notes with product team
5 varied complex merchant user flows into one master flow
I spearheaded the summarization of my research into an overview of trends, pain points, user needs, and strategic suggestions. This provided essential context about our customers' priorities, enabling the design phase to be well-informed and user-centric
Deck presented to Product, Marketing and IT teams
Communication of most critical usability issues
"I was filling in the form online, but got stuck on one of the questions. I wasn't sure how to answer it correctly! I've already been rejected by my bank. I got your email, so I just wanted to know if I can get a cash advance, can you help me?".
- Customer call quote
I facilitated a collaborative workshop with Product, Marketing, Sales, IT, and Fulfilment teams driven by the research I had uncovered. Our goal was to:
1. Highlight gaps and seams in the customer journey, company-wide
2. Generate solutions to enhance usability and completion rates
3. Align cross-functional teams on priorities and feasibility
As part of this session, we ranked the ideas based on perceived customer impact and feasibility for the company.
From this session, I synthesized ideas into actionable design directions:
From this session together with the Head of Product, I teased out the best approaches that we later ended up wire framing and testing internally.
I synthesized ideas into actionable design directions.
1. Streamlined Login
Switch from merchant number to government-registered business number or email to reduce early-stage drop-offs.
2. Adaptive Quote Flow
I recommended tailoring the experience and filtering customers based on their browsing behaviour versus those urgently needing cash. Browsing customers, who are less likely to complete all stages immediately, would receive a high-level general estimate with fewer questions.
3. Simplified Information Architecture
Research showed user confusion with question order and homepage navigation after email redirection. To address this, information should be structured to meet needs for growth and monetization. The proposed design recommendation included two zones on the screen:
• Top Menu Navigation Zone: Persistent top zone remains visible at all times— to guide users clearly through the process.
• Active Zone: Central screen area displaying the current stage of the application process, further helping users understand their progress.
This approach provides clear signposting and improves the logical flow of information.
4. Stage Reduction & Clarity
Reduced the number of stages from 7 to 5, resulting in a quicker experience with supporting tech and procurement / finance process. This was because people wanted improved efficiency.
5. Integration Full End-To-End Journey
For customer continuity, integrate confirmation, approval, check and contractual stages to create a complete online process, with feature enhancements to make online contractual singing legally binding.
6. Assistive Features
Push data sync with partner sites and add autofill to reduce errors - inaccuracies can lead to fund rejections and further loss of conversions.
7. Conversational Tone
Research revealed people were commonly stressed when applying for business funding. A softer, approachable language to reduce this stress was valued.
8. Quote flexibility
Research revealed most customer calls were to reconfigure quote amounts / repayment lengths. Embed an ability to customize cash amounts, according to level of urgency or, business sales - a huge pain point for customers urgently needing cash.
9. Mobile Version
To match modern times and to empower people to instantly onboard from any marketing emails.
10. Progress Bar
This is because people had no indication how far they were to getting a quote.
The trade-offs of these combined would be achieving higher usability, flexibility and completion of online journeys, with customers able to do the end-to-end process all online. However, limitations included the timeframe for the tech build and the need to set up accurate data sync / accessibility with partner data hubs.
With business as usual priorities in mind, we streamlined the experience to what we could deliver and test quickly in an in-office and remote format. I engineered how the journey could be represented as wireframes and orchestrated the workshop plan.
I translated these insights into wireframes, high-level prototypes, and a testing plan.
Key steps included:
• Master Flow Creation: Unified five merchant flows into a single, consistent journey.
• Wireframing & Prototyping: Developed clickable prototypes to visualize key touchpoints and validate solutions.
User Workshop Plan
Setting up (user testing)
Testing revealed the experience had a 55% faster completion rate.
Increased clarity with people stating the journey was more logical, informative and easier to complete.
Confirmation of the holistic end-to-end flow, including contract signing, with most pleased with the added in stages.
Testing also uncovered additional needs to resolve issues for joint business owners logging in and adding their credentials as part of the application process.
Due to the unexpected outbreak of COVID-19, my tenure with Liberis concluded before further iterative testing could be conducted. However, the teams had clear guidance and a structured roadmap to continue validation and refinement remotely.
These key next steps included:
• Remote validation: Further testing and synthesis with Marketing and Product Managers to ensure designs met real-world user needs.
• Iterative improvements: Addressing joint business owner logins, flexible quote adjustments, and additional accessibility enhancements.
• Scaling across partners: Roll-out of the white-label solution to more merchant sites, guided by the design framework and templates I developed.
This project reinforced the importance of:
• Human-first design: Even complex, regulated financial processes can be made intuitive and supportive.
•Cross-functional collaboration: Close alignment across Product, Marketing, IT, and Fulfilment was critical to actionable outcomes.
• Embedding design thinking: Deliverables acted as a blueprint for the company’s future platform strategy and in-house design team growth.
By the end of my engagement, Liberis had a fully mapped, user-validated onboarding experience that improved conversions, reduced labor costs, and set the stage for a more human-centered culture.
