Executive Summary
Overview
Acting as Lead UX Designer in a 3-week sprint, I designed a tool for salespeople to quickly create a high level overview for Business Cases, or value-based pitch document. The existing AI functionality for Business Cases was not being used, and as a result, very few salespeople were actually writing Executive Summaries. The goal of this sprint was to encourage users to create Executive Summaries, and to help them write them in a clean and focused interface.
A snapshot of the features of our redesign:
Creation Flow
The user creates a business case in a revised modal flow. The user lands on a clean and focused interface.
Macro Deck Formatting
Greater control over the order and flow of the deck, with greater options for customization.
Writing, Editing, Creativity
Make detailed and precise adjustments to the content of the deck, including type styles, images and other embedded content.
Quick Create with AI
Easily preview AI templates on hover and quickly add pre-filled content to help get started writing.
Client Background
Minoa is a value intelligence platform that helps B2B sales teams create collaborative business cases: turning complex ROI spreadsheets into clean, shareable documents that sellers co-create with their prospects.
Executive Summaries are the first part of the business case a prospect will see - it's an opportunity for the seller make a high level summary of their value proposition for an executive buyer.
Requirements
Competitive Research
I reviewed a handful of competitors UIs, looking closely at their AI-assisted writing features and their empty states, with a focus on clean, simple interfaces that allow for creativity.
Google Docs
Notion
Insights
Empty state guides users to action
Notion indicates the keyboard shortcut to open the command menu. Google has a suite of template buttons that a user can select from.
Template previews on hover
Google docs display a skeleton of the template on hover. Its noncommittal, it prompts users to action and it prevents a truly empty state.
Command menu with keypad trigger
Notion puts all AI, media and text formatting features in a dropdown menu with a keypad trigger, also accessible from a context menu revealed on hover while a block is selected.
Design Solution
The dev team toolkit (TipTap block editor) guided the majority of the formatting and block functionality decisions. The main creative focus was on how to guide the user to action, make sure AI features were visible and easy to use, and create a clean and focused interface.
