Reporting Management Tool:
A UX Overhaul for Clarity and Control
Overview
A complete redesign of the report management tool to improve report discoverability, clarify report functions, and streamline scheduling. The project introduced a new landing page, search and filter capabilities, template management, and improved accessibility across devices
Role
Product Designer
I was responsible for conducting user research, analyzing data, prototyping to visualize insights, and designing the report management experience. I also mentored a new designer to help him understand the design standards.
Keywords
System Design
SaaS
Digital Transformation
↑ 12% increase
in usage
✓ 1,200 increase
reports more compared to the previous year.
What is the Report Management Tool?
The Report Management Tool is a self-service analytics platform that empowers businesses to track software and hardware expenses. It streamlines budget management and financial oversight for both individual customers and parent companies.
Why we redesign the 15-year-old system?
Originally a 15-year-old internal tool, the system became unsustainable as the business scaled. To cut costs and improve efficiency, it was transitioned to a customer self-service model. However, poor usability necessitated a full redesign to ensure the platform was intuitive, accessible, and ready for future growth.
New
Before
Problem
While powerful, the legacy system was too complex for customers to navigate independently. Difficulty in finding and managing reports led to a heavy reliance on support teams, creating operational bottlenecks and reducing efficiency.
Challenge
The original request was to "just update the UI" — but deeper usability issues quickly surfaced.
User roles and needs were undefined, making it hard to design with clarity and purpose.
Customers lacked confidence in using the tool, often relying on support for report generation.
Design Process
Phase 1: Understand
Who are the stakeholders?
1: Sales Representatives -
Sales reps manage multiple clients and generate reports tailored to each client’s needs.
2: Customers -
Customers are businesses that use the platform to generate reports for software usage and budget planning.
Stakeholder interview
We interviewed internal and external users to capture diverse perspectives. Through these sessions and live demos, we identified real-world usage patterns and critical pain points in the legacy experience.
1: Endless Scrolling & Overload123
Long, unorganized report lists made navigation difficult and slowed down user efficiency.
2: Confusing Account Identification
Users struggled to link reports to specific accounts when managing multiple clients.
3: Template Confusion & Redundancy
Confusing template features led to repetitive manual work and wasted effort.
4: Inflexible Scheduled Reports123
Lack of management tools (edit/delete) for scheduled reports led duplicate tasks.
5: Inconsistent Formats & Outputs
Inconsistent report structures made it difficult to compare data or use it reliably.
6: Lack of Visual Clarity12345612
Poor discoverability and a cluttered interface hindered efficient navigation.
Phase 2: Explore
UX Strategy
Empowering Confident Reporting Through UX
We developed a UX strategy focused on boosting user literacy through a structured reporting journey. By building user confidence and clarity, we aimed to drive independent report management and platform adoption.
Customer User Journey
Instilling strategies into users' journey
To concretize the strategy, we've generated features that will serve each strategy and mapped them on to the users' journey.
Phase 3: Design
New User Flow & Side Menu
We unified the experience into a single, adaptive flow that remains consistent across all user roles. The streamlined journey:
Consolidates access points into a unified starting page
Offers guided steps based on report type and user goals
Highlights saved templates and previously run reports
Clarifies scheduling, editing, and delivery options
Before User Flow & Side Menu
The old experience featured fragmented, inconsistent entry points. Different user roles relied on trial and error through informal paths, leading:
Confusion over which path was correct
Repetitive actions across different pages
Difficulty locating specific reports
Lack of standardization across user types
Ideation
We conducted a comparative usability test by presenting two prototype ideas to stakeholders. We observed how they interacted with each version and asked which one they preferred, helping us identify the more intuitive design.
Preferred Idea 1 for its:
Cleaner layout
Better readability
More modern visual design
Concerns with Idea 2:
Required excessive scrolling
Difficult to locate specific reports (especially with hundreds of entries)
Hard to scan and read long report descriptions
Idea 1
Idea 2
Phase 4: Final Delivery
New report system
Simplified navigation with a unified top bar and clear tabs, and organized reports by category for better readability.
Added a dropdown for report explanations, reducing the need to switch between pages.
Removed clutter and duplicate paths to enhance focus and usability.
New version
Old version
Report Template
The Report Templates section was moved to its own dedicated tab to reduce visual clutter and help users focus more easily.
The “Run” and “Edit” actions are now clearly separated into their own column, making them eas ier to locate and use.
The updated layout supports better scalability, allowing users to view more templates at once without feeling overwhelmed.
New version
Old version
Scheduled Report
Applied a consistent layout to align with the overall report management experience.
Designed a clear empty state view to guide users when no scheduled reports are available.
Added a prominent “Schedule Report” button to help users easily understand how to get started.
New version
Old version
Confirmation Component
Created reusable components for confirmation interactions to maintain consistency.
Designed success message toasts to provide clear feedback after actions are completed.
Built standardized modals for scheduling and editing, making it easier for developers to implement across the tool.
Phase 5: Future development
Report Generate
Postponed development of the report generation detail page due to time and team capacity constraints.
Next steps include unifying the design style across the platform for consistency.
Plan to redesign the report generation detail experience and validate entire experience improvements through A/B testing.
New version
Old version
↑ 12% increase
in usage
✓ 1,200 increase
reports more compared to the previous year.
Personally, it was a fruitful moment for me to contribute to a collaborative effort. Sharing our research insights on the visualized prototypes, we were able to expedite our process by reducing communication loss. Although it wasn't easy to take on this role independently, it was enlightening to see this phase adopted as a formal process in following projects.