What this project delivered
The situation
Officeworks' B2B platform was built on legacy technology that could not support the growing complexity of enterprise customer needs. The platform handled thousands of business accounts with unique approval workflows, custom catalogues, and multi-user permissions, but the experience was fragmented and inefficient.
Research quickly revealed that procurement managers, purchasers, and administrators each had fundamentally different mental models, but the platform treated every user the same. This created approval bottlenecks, catalogue confusion, and an error message experience that generated significant support overhead.
Key problem statement
How might we transform a legacy B2B ecommerce platform into a modern, scalable solution that serves complex enterprise procurement needs, while maintaining business continuity?
What I was responsible for
As Lead Product Designer, I led a team of two designers across the entire replatforming initiative, owning all UX strategy, research, and interaction design decisions.
- Leading end-to-end UX design across all replatforming workstreams
- Conducting extensive user research with business customers and internal stakeholders
- Defining information architecture and interaction patterns for complex workflows
- Creating and maintaining design system components specifically for B2B needs
- Collaborating with engineering, product, and business teams across multiple squads
- Advocating for user needs in technical and business constraint discussions
How I solved it
I led a comprehensive research phase to understand the diverse needs of B2B users, from administrators to procurement managers at large enterprises.
Research methods
- Contextual inquiry: shadowed procurement teams to observe actual workflows and pain points
- Stakeholder interviews: conducted 25+ interviews with business customers, account managers, and internal teams
- Data analysis: analysed user behaviour data, support tickets, and abandonment patterns
- Competitive analysis: evaluated B2B ecommerce experiences across industries
Key insights
- Approval workflows were the biggest pain point: enterprise customers had multi-level approval processes, but the platform treated every user the same
- Catalogue management was confusing: business customers could not easily find or manage their approved product catalogues
- Unclear terminology, error messages, and information architecture caused users to loop through the same dead ends repeatedly
What I designed
- Reimagined information architecture structured around user mental models, with clear pathways for purchasers, approvers, and administrators
- Flexible approval system with clear status tracking, customisable approval chains, and bulk approval capabilities
- Enhanced catalogue management, making it intuitive for businesses to manage approved products and guide employee purchasing
- B2B-specific design system components contributed to the emerging shared library, covering approval workflows, bulk actions, and role management
Cross-functional collaboration
I worked closely with contractors and in-house designers, engineering teams, product managers, and business stakeholders, balancing user needs with commercial objectives throughout a 30+ person programme.
Detailed outcomes
Business metrics
- 5 minutes saved per checkout on average, through streamlined approval workflows and clearer error messaging that eliminated repetitive failure loops
- $80K+ in annual savings in team member time, by reducing hours spent on support calls, troubleshooting checkout issues, and resolving approval confusion
- Successful migration of 8% of Officeworks' business customer base with minimal disruption
*Based on behavioural data approximation
User experience improvements
- Task completion time reduced by 35% for common workflows in usability testing
- Significant reduction in support ticket volume for approval-related queries post-launch
Strategic value
- Created a scalable foundation for future B2B feature development
- Established design patterns adopted across other Officeworks digital products
- Built strong, durable relationships between design, product, and engineering
What I would carry forward
Reflection
This project reinforced my belief that great B2B design comes from deep empathy for users combined with understanding of business realities. By involving users throughout the process and collaborating closely with cross-functional partners, we created a solution that genuinely worked for everyone.
- Role-based mental models need to be the first thing you map in any B2B project, not an afterthought after the IA is set
- Approval workflows are invisible to designers until you shadow the real process: no amount of document review replaces watching a procurement manager navigate a multi-level sign-off under time pressure
- Building B2B-specific design system components in parallel with delivery is expensive short-term and essential long-term. The investment paid off across every subsequent squad that inherited the patterns