Driving Business Impact Through Strategic Design

PandaDoc: Elevating UX to Unlock Growth

I led a company-wide initiative to address a critical growth bottleneck: strong user retention once onboarded, but low activation and adoption from new users. My strategy was to make user experience a board-level priority, linking design investment directly to activation, adoption, and sentiment metrics.

The Challenge:
From Organic Growth to UX Bottleneck

Over years of organic evolution, PandaDoc’s document workflow platform had accumulated a fragmented user experience. New features were added without a comprehensive end-to-end journey in mind, creating friction that hindered initial engagement despite high retention from committed users.

I launched the Top 5 Journeys project to map and score critical user flows, revealing severe drop-off points and usability gaps. But a major partnership initiative diverted R&D investment, deprioritizing UX and risking further stagnation.

Role

  • Business Development
  • Engagement Scoping
  • Creative Direction
  • Workshop Facilitation
  • Program Management & Execution

Strategic Influence &
Executive Buy-in

To reverse this shift, I ran a company-wide roadshow—sharing journey maps, user pain points, and competitive benchmarks with executives, product leaders, and cross-functional teams. This sparked a shared understanding of the UX problem and encouraged teams to prioritize experience improvements within their roadmaps.

My team’s mid-year research report quantified the direct connection between UX quality and activation, adoption, and sentiment, providing the evidence needed to influence planning cycles. The sustained advocacy worked: in Q4, the CEO and CPO presented the 2025 company strategy to the board with a primary focus on UX improvements as a growth driver.

Execution & Measurable Impact

To translate strategy into action, I created a forward-looking design vision grounded in user research and feedback. Presented at company-wide forums, this vision generated broad excitement and alignment heading into the next fiscal year.

Impact

  • 24 critical user journeys improved from ‘F’ to ‘A’ or ‘B’ out of 42 mapped

  • NPS increased from 30 to 41

  • New user activation rose by 10%

  • Core feature adoption up ~20%

Key Reflections

This work reinforced the value of sustained executive engagement and dedicated resources to keep UX at the forefront. While our vision was realistic and achievable, an even bolder, more aspirational approach might have accelerated transformation and amplified leadership buy-in.