As the first in-house UX/UI designer, my first question was: who is this product for? What are their needs, their pain points? How do users actually use Manaos? Personas had already been drafted when Manaos was created, but never updated. Once the personas were defined, whenever a topic is added to the product roadmap, a study is conducted with the PO to understand the need and/or the problem at hand.

• To update Manaos' personas: I ran two workshops with the product team and the sales/marketing team, to create genuine user personas rather than customer personas.
• When creating or updating a feature:
  • When the feature already existed, I started my research by analyzing Matomo data to understand current usage, then dug deeper with exploratory interviews. I rounded this out by discussing the topic's history with internal teams.
  • For a brand-new feature, market research and a benchmark were carried out with the PO. Discussions with the sales teams also helped understand user/customer demand.

Once the solution's broad outlines were set, user flows were built to understand the full journey (front & back) — here, a focus on the reporting flow — then mockups were created in Figma using the design system in place.

I built the user flow for this journey and mocked up the screens using the Manaos design system, aiming for maximum realism to prepare for user testing.

To add more realism, prototypes are created and tested across 3 phases, with mockup iterations after each test.

I have the prototype tested by three successive audiences:

• Test with the PO in charge of the topic and the squad's developers
• Test with the sales/customer experience team
• Test with real users

Results for the reporting journey: two clients, including 4 users, took part in the user tests, and the following points emerged:

• The report-creation funnel's structure was validated.
• The proposed reports cover the main ones, but some wanted new ones to appear in the list based on new regulatory requirements.
• The biggest blocker: the data summary screen during report creation. Depending on the profile, some wanted to group by portfolio, others by NAV. The UX improvement implemented was a "Group by" feature in the grid component, with a default grouping that users can change.

As Manaos had never worked with an in-house UX/UI designer, one of my first missions was to set up a UX strategy that fit into the product organization — split into several squads by feature.

I set up a cross-functional strategy involving all stakeholders: the sales team (client/user knowledge), the product team (PO and proxy-PO), and the IT teams (technical knowledge). All built on Design Thinking principles and the Scrum method used in the squads, with 3-week sprints.

When I joined, no design system had been created. The goal: standardize the design and behavior of components across the whole platform. Once this Figma system was mature enough, a Storybook update began — the mirror of components once built and developed.

I created the design system in Figma based on the live product (MUI v6, AG Grid, Quicksight libraries), working with the front-end developers. Once this system matured, I led its transition into Storybook: reviewing existing components, creating new ones, removing unused ones. I took on the product owner role for this topic — every component to modify or rebuild is the subject of a Jira ticket I write myself.

Working with the sales team, a user club was launched in 2024, aimed at niche users matching Manaos' personas who wanted to help improve the platform.

I set up an annual event to bring users together around shared topics. From a UX standpoint, this also let me build a pool of people I could call on for workshops or surveys.