When I started at Napp, my task was to gradually improve the design, look and feel as well as the user experience of their digital publishing platform and app, Siesta.
Challenge
But just two months in, a new strategy for Siesta was presented. Originally serving as a Publishing Platform, Siesta would now be expanded to be a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) system—which meant a complete repositioning of the product, brand and design assets, and a scope that would grow tenfold.
The challenge was no longer just improving an existing product. It was translating the new business strategy into a new version of the product.
Discovery
I set out to understand Partner Relationship Management, having no prior experience with it, and in general little idea of what it even meant. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one.
Almost everyone I talked to knew what a CRM was, but had no knowledge of partner relationship management. Regardless of terminology, I wanted to understand what clients needed, and were trying to do with the platform.
I interviewed a few customers, gathered insights from our sales team and listened in during product demonstrations. Research was limited, but eventually I developed an understanding of the people we were designing for.
Strategy
The strategy was clear from leadership: Siesta would become a Partner Relationship Management platform. What wasn’t clear was what that actually meant for the product.
I translated the strategic direction into a new product experience. That meant rethinking the information architecture, navigation, terminology and core workflows to support a much broader platform—without overwhelming users.
One example was renaming the feature “Access Groups” to simply “Teams” separating the logic to first and foremost be about a grouping people, and then giving that group access to content.
Instead of a long list of features, I organised the navigation based on intention. Publish for publications and creating forms, Manage for partner and user administration, Collab for messages and chat and Engage for campaigns and push messaging. This drastically reduced the complexity of the interface.
The website, product messaging, UI copy and graphic design assets were redesigned to communicate one consistent story about what Siesta had become.
The goal wasn’t simply to redesign the interface—it was to make a completely new product direction understandable and usable, together with a brand and communication to support it.
Contribution
- Defined a new information architecture supporting the PRM strategy.
- Translated advanced technical concepts into language customers understood.
- Simplified complex workflows around real customer jobs.
- Aligned website, product and onboarding around the new positioning.
- Established the visual and interaction design for the backend and app
- Partnered with development, reviewing implementations and refining solutions
- Collaborated with leadership to continuously align product and strategy
Learnings
Looking back, I realised that translating strategy and creating strategy are two very different skills.
This project taught me how to take a strategic direction and turn it into something customers could understand and use.
It also taught me that strategy should always be informed by the customers. The best product decisions aren’t driven by a product name or acronym, but by understanding of the problems customers are trying to solve.