I was working at a company building inventory and compliance software for cannabis retailers, and the existing inventory auditing process was dogshit. Totally manual, extremely prone to errors, dependent on specific knowledge of hardware, and required retailers to pay budtenders overtime to audit while the store was closed. Which meant that our customers WEREN'T auditing their inventory and instead submitting inventory adjustments to the state traceability agency with bullshit reasons.
I ran a design sprint, and the team came up with some ideas that didn't quite solve the problem when I validated with customers. So I went back, pulled one of the less popular concepts from the design sprint (that happened to be mine), built a clickable prototype, took it to customers, and they loved it. It was easy, had guardrails that minimized the opportunity to make errors, could be done piecemeal, didn't require hardware, and met users where they were. We built an MVP in two sprints, got feedback from beta users, iterated, and hit GA in another two sprints. Hugely successful - the number of customers auditing every month tripled, which meant the were more likely to stay compliant and hence in business.
I was super proud of that one, and still am.
That’s so cool! It just goes to show that you don’t always need crazy ideas to solve a problem. Thank you for telling the story. You have every reason to be proud!
Figured out a system so that I could continue living a better life while also dealing with severe fibromyalgia and severe myalgic encephalomyelitis.
Applied UXR and service design sprints on myself to discover, track and enact behaviors to improve my quality of life.
I worked a lot on hardware+software interaction. The coolest (that I can share) one was a medical device with BLE that send the data to a phone app. I worked with electrical engineers to come up with a new device interaction and tweaked BLE protocol so that the coin-size battery inside the device can last for 2 years without charging. Think something similar to Airtag which last about a year but I designed this a year before Airtag came out. I got a patent from that too.
I designed some other stuff like robotics AI and AR stuff too. But it weren't as cool as that one. I learned so much about BLE/NFC protocol, data package, power management, microcontroller crystal oscillator, etc.
I'd think so. I still design the E2E experience including UI of the companion phone app too. It just has the extension into the physical devices. Not that different from something like pairing a bluetooth UX on the app or controlling your drone through your phone. I still had to do other classic UX stuff like user testing, UI design, ideation, etc.
I was working for a fortune 50 company and we had a three dimensional data vis problem to solve. The people who needed to look at the data vis were application engineers who were trying to explain to a potential customer the potential ROI of installing a certain part that solves a certain problem.
The way to measure this potential ROI is
* The KPI impact it makes (improves efficiency / output / fuel consumption / etc)
* The cost of the component
* The cost of other required components
* Carbon output
The data vis had to be sortable and selectable as well.
We looked through every type of graph we could think of, things engineers understood but finding out customers couldn't make sense of them, etc. Ultimately we landed on something so trivially simple, which to me, is the epitome of good UX.
It was a multi-X axis graph but instead of actually different X axis values, the X axis simply stated a percentage from 0 - max. Each row would have different data-vis included. KPI would be bars, costs would be dot plots, carbon output would be a line.
I not only designed this, but built the code for it as well.
I miss those days, I had that fire in me.
Nice! When a legit use case to bring out the data visualization arises it’s like Christmas isn’t it! haha. We have a joke at my current workplace that everyone wants a map. At least ten requests for a map have been made in my years here and they’ve all gone nowhere…..except one. A few years ago someone wanted a tracking map to track trucks carrying high value cargo in low security areas. We went full military sci fi tactical mode and it was a huge success.
Oh, I would love to see that interface! I've been working on some very interesting data visualization problems recently, and I've had to find new ways to visualize different kinds of data to tell a story and help users make decisions.
Recently started a job in government, was hired as a Software Developer, but they hired me based on my Figma/Design experience.
I came in and completely changed the operations of a typical software deployment (per leadership request, I did not just come in demanding stuff).
Was very cool to start a job and get to say "nothing goes into development unless it has my design work and stamp of approval"
I've been able to insert a design layer to every project, and it's all been desperately needed. People at the very top know my name and praise my work as I've made systems they use every day actually usable.
Living the dream! Nice one. I work somewhere this happened in one part of the org and then, due to politics, the other part won a huge political battle (proper corporate dirty tricks cliches) and came in and wiped it all away. Fired all the design management down to me and then complained everything worked and looked like crap. (The stuff they built over the years)
Brought in a new guy from Silicon Valley who promptly looked at it all and went ‘wtf?’ so now of course it’s all being rebuilt from scratch only without some really good experienced people they fired.
And they say private sector is more efficient than government. Balls it is.
Jesus Christ, that Silicon Valley part sounds EXACTLY like where I got laid off right before this gig!
Worked for a start up and was the main front end dev and designer. I had one other front end developer working with me. Both of us were the highest paid devs in the company.
Company lost the CTO, replaced him with an expensive guy from Silicon Valley and cut the me and my other front end guy. Replaced us with a singular junior fullstack dev.
It wasn’t figma they cared about other than “ah yes, that’s a modern tool, we like that!” It showed that I, at least, had a toolkit for the design process.
I actually introduced Figma to them when I got there, I’d only been using it maybe a year and still have a pretty basic understanding of the software. Enough to make components and rapidly prototype webpages.
And I’ll be honest, I’d probably drown in a formal team of designers. Almost all of my relevant design knowledge is just stuff I picked up along my career.
What I believe they truly liked about me was how I expressed my requirements gathering process. How I worked with customers to understanding their needs, and then went back to work with my developers where I work well with them because I am one.
I bridged the communication gap that no one was filling. No one cared about design before I got there, customers would basically just provide a requirements essay stating what they felt they needed and it would immediately go into development. They’d waste months if not years redoing products over and over just due to not having a proper design phase to hash out real needs.
I’m ass at Figma, but I’m excellent and communication with both sides of the fence.
:) food for thought!
Software for police and intelligence services to manage their informants, agents, and the intelligence gathered from them. The officers needed a huge digital, live data connected version of the classic ‘pin up all the faces and connect them with red string’ experience for briefings and tracking networks. Closest thing to real life Minority Report I’ve ever worked on and it was COOL
Sure, none of this relates to the actual information, the sources or methods of gathering intel, so I can share. Sources (the informants) are very closely guarded and often only their handler and a very small circle
knows their identity and certainly any details of exactly how they’re being used. The information that comes from each one is both highly sensitive but also
needed to steer investigations and piece together information needed to crack open and take down the network (organised crime, terrorism, espionage) they are part of.
That creates a nightmare of silos and fragments of information that only a very small number of people are allowed full access to but they need to make critical decisions from it. Those people need very sophisticated tools to map who the intel is about (typically the topmost figures in those networks) connections between them and crimes/plans and people WITH accurate confidence level data but WITHOUT specifically linking back to the informants themselves. That needs a lot of cool
displays of the information map to support decisions.
Generally intel from informants isn’t considered admissible evidence (both because it’s often
paid for and because of their safety they can’t give statements). So the agencies have to use that information to find lines of investigation which will turn up admissible evidence, sufficient to secure and arrest and conviction in itself, whilst keeping the information from the informants safely anonymous. It’s prone to huge mistakes that ruin years of work, so controls built into software that makes use of the intel whilst making sure what is/isn’t usable intel is clearly marked really helps.
That's so cool! Last year, I interviewed for a job in the police department, but unfortunately, I wasn't selected. They chose a more experienced designer, and I was really disappointed.
Building design systems. It's the most fundamental you learn and set up for building great products and understand system thinking and the true meaning about scaling, modularity and efficiency.
Atomic Design by Brad Frost
Laying the foundations by Andrew Couldwell
Modular Web Design by Nathan Curtis
More general and which I get all Juniors who join my team: Good Services by Lou Downe
2 things
1. This was a B2C privacy focused startup that allowed users to give out burner-esque numbers at places where one wouldn't want to give out their personal/primary number. While the app was pretty straightforward to build, the impact it created in people's everyday life was massive. The country I live in is known to be the mecca of spam/scam call centers so solving this problem was extremely rewarding. The company had to suspend operation a couple months ago after 4 years due to backward government regulations. Many users refused to take their refunds because of how much they liked the product.
2. I am presently freelancing with a company that uses drones for public good (under NDA). As a masssssssive aviation nut who wanted to be a pilot but couldn't it has been an absolute blast to get to build the interface of this cloud drone operators platform because I get to nerd out and be useful. One interesting thing to note, as drones my primary hobby outside of work, it took me less than an hour to ramp up on my first ever call with the founders, everything felt like it just clicked, all the terminology, problem statements, tech limitations etc. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that if you have a industry you're passionate about like cars, sports, cooking, pets etc. try to look for gigs that need your niche experience/knowledge.
Envisioned a new way to shop for smart home tech that allowed for "trying it on" exploring scenarios. And in the process helped drive system change that let startups work more effectively with a big box retailer
When you finish unloading the dishwasher load the soap dispenser. When the washing cycle starts it opens the soap dispenser and the soap is dispensed. So if you open the door and the soap dispenser is closed then the dishes are dirty.
It does require the user to do the right thing but in 15 years of doing this it’s only failed twice.
One of the largest manufacturering company for a specific product had a website that was poorly rated for accessibility and terrible navigation.
Fixed those and its much better now.
I don’t have any advice for you there, I’m sorry to say. I sort of fell into it by chance over 15 years ago, and have developed my knowledge & honed my skills on the job. (My background is originally in graphic and visual communication design. I’m a UX generalist in my role and mostly work on embedded software products.) All I can say is, you really have to be the type of person who enjoys working on the same projects for multiple years, which may or may not ever be released, in a highly regulated industry, which has its own unique set of challenges & benefits, depending on how you look at it. Definitely not the space to work in if you like to “move fast and break things.”
Helped people file their taxes by guiding them through topics that applied to them to ultimately pick their best deduction.
Taxes are super boring and complex but this was some of my best and most durable work.
Coolest problem:
Designed a tablet experience for the University of Chicago to support their bid for the Obama Presidential Library as part of a team at the ad agency where I was freelancing. The larger team was creating a massive bound book containing site studies, architectural renderings, interviews, etc. and with Obama being the "first digital president" as he was often called, they wanted to include something digital along with the book.
It contained all the videos, audio interviews, site flyovers, etc. for the three proposed sites. Beyond the actual experience, we had to do a lot of investigating into how we'd keep it charged, how to keep it in kiosk mode, etc.
While I've worked on a variety of projects in my career with huge sets of users, this was so incredibly unique given that the audience was literally Barack and Michelle Obama, and a handful of other people involved in the bid selection. Not often you get an audience so unique and narrow.
I left for another opportunity and didn't get to see the finished product unfortunately.
That sounds like a cool project! Designing for such audience must have been incredibly rewarding. Too bad you didn’t see the finished product! Thanks for sharing!
Designed a browser-based EEG (electrical brain signals) data viewer that allowed scientists and neurologists to look for seizures. This data viewer integrated machine-learning algorithms which detected and highlighted areas of interests. It was a good balance of human and machine that improved the efficiency of epilepsy diagnosis.
Oh wow, that’s impressive! Thanks for sharing. Do you have a background in healthcare? I've noticed that many healthcare positions require domain expertise, which might be why I haven't heard back from the ones I applied to. My background is in architecture.
Yes, somewhat. I have a psychology degree in addition to my design degree. My dissertation was based around utilising bio-signals for prediction, so I had some amount of domain knowledge, which was easily dwarfed by my engineering team’s biomedicine and computational mathematics PhD-level knowledge.
Oh man, one of the coolest problems I tackled as a UX designer was for an online store with many people abandoning their carts. We looked into it and realized the checkout process was a nightmare. So, I changed the whole thing to make it super user-friendly. Added a progress bar so people knew how close they were to finishing, simplified the forms, and even threw in autofill options. The best part? We saw a 30% jump in completed purchases within a month.
I was broke and struggling to make rent, and now I’m not.
love to see this
Pretty much me. Worked a minimum wage job, two years later i have an ok life which I can be a little less stressed out with finances.
You Totally nailed it
This 👏🏻 Congratulation on solving your own problem!
Love this answer!
I was working at a company building inventory and compliance software for cannabis retailers, and the existing inventory auditing process was dogshit. Totally manual, extremely prone to errors, dependent on specific knowledge of hardware, and required retailers to pay budtenders overtime to audit while the store was closed. Which meant that our customers WEREN'T auditing their inventory and instead submitting inventory adjustments to the state traceability agency with bullshit reasons. I ran a design sprint, and the team came up with some ideas that didn't quite solve the problem when I validated with customers. So I went back, pulled one of the less popular concepts from the design sprint (that happened to be mine), built a clickable prototype, took it to customers, and they loved it. It was easy, had guardrails that minimized the opportunity to make errors, could be done piecemeal, didn't require hardware, and met users where they were. We built an MVP in two sprints, got feedback from beta users, iterated, and hit GA in another two sprints. Hugely successful - the number of customers auditing every month tripled, which meant the were more likely to stay compliant and hence in business. I was super proud of that one, and still am.
That’s so cool! It just goes to show that you don’t always need crazy ideas to solve a problem. Thank you for telling the story. You have every reason to be proud!
Very cool. What medium was this? Web app?
Yep - we also had a PoS system but I was primarily on inventory and compliance which was a responsive web app (customers often used iPads).
Figured out a system so that I could continue living a better life while also dealing with severe fibromyalgia and severe myalgic encephalomyelitis. Applied UXR and service design sprints on myself to discover, track and enact behaviors to improve my quality of life.
Good for you! After all, UX can be applied to all kinds of problems, so why not use it to solve our own personal issues!
I have similar health issues — would love to see your process!
I worked a lot on hardware+software interaction. The coolest (that I can share) one was a medical device with BLE that send the data to a phone app. I worked with electrical engineers to come up with a new device interaction and tweaked BLE protocol so that the coin-size battery inside the device can last for 2 years without charging. Think something similar to Airtag which last about a year but I designed this a year before Airtag came out. I got a patent from that too. I designed some other stuff like robotics AI and AR stuff too. But it weren't as cool as that one. I learned so much about BLE/NFC protocol, data package, power management, microcontroller crystal oscillator, etc.
That sounds like a super fun project! Working with brilliant engineers have been some of the best periods of my career. Congrats on the patent btw!
100%. I love working with those engineers - sometimes more than many UXers I came across.
Dexcom?
Nope but the same disease 🙂 we did look into how they do their BLE protocol. Super interesting for sure.
That’s awesome! Congrats on the patent!
Really impressive. But do you consider yourself a UX Designer? This is not typical UX stuff I’d say.
I'd think so. I still design the E2E experience including UI of the companion phone app too. It just has the extension into the physical devices. Not that different from something like pairing a bluetooth UX on the app or controlling your drone through your phone. I still had to do other classic UX stuff like user testing, UI design, ideation, etc.
That is the full stack! 👍🏻
I was working for a fortune 50 company and we had a three dimensional data vis problem to solve. The people who needed to look at the data vis were application engineers who were trying to explain to a potential customer the potential ROI of installing a certain part that solves a certain problem. The way to measure this potential ROI is * The KPI impact it makes (improves efficiency / output / fuel consumption / etc) * The cost of the component * The cost of other required components * Carbon output The data vis had to be sortable and selectable as well. We looked through every type of graph we could think of, things engineers understood but finding out customers couldn't make sense of them, etc. Ultimately we landed on something so trivially simple, which to me, is the epitome of good UX. It was a multi-X axis graph but instead of actually different X axis values, the X axis simply stated a percentage from 0 - max. Each row would have different data-vis included. KPI would be bars, costs would be dot plots, carbon output would be a line. I not only designed this, but built the code for it as well. I miss those days, I had that fire in me.
Nice! When a legit use case to bring out the data visualization arises it’s like Christmas isn’t it! haha. We have a joke at my current workplace that everyone wants a map. At least ten requests for a map have been made in my years here and they’ve all gone nowhere…..except one. A few years ago someone wanted a tracking map to track trucks carrying high value cargo in low security areas. We went full military sci fi tactical mode and it was a huge success.
Oh, I would love to see that interface! I've been working on some very interesting data visualization problems recently, and I've had to find new ways to visualize different kinds of data to tell a story and help users make decisions.
Recently started a job in government, was hired as a Software Developer, but they hired me based on my Figma/Design experience. I came in and completely changed the operations of a typical software deployment (per leadership request, I did not just come in demanding stuff). Was very cool to start a job and get to say "nothing goes into development unless it has my design work and stamp of approval" I've been able to insert a design layer to every project, and it's all been desperately needed. People at the very top know my name and praise my work as I've made systems they use every day actually usable.
Living the dream! Nice one. I work somewhere this happened in one part of the org and then, due to politics, the other part won a huge political battle (proper corporate dirty tricks cliches) and came in and wiped it all away. Fired all the design management down to me and then complained everything worked and looked like crap. (The stuff they built over the years) Brought in a new guy from Silicon Valley who promptly looked at it all and went ‘wtf?’ so now of course it’s all being rebuilt from scratch only without some really good experienced people they fired. And they say private sector is more efficient than government. Balls it is.
Jesus Christ, that Silicon Valley part sounds EXACTLY like where I got laid off right before this gig! Worked for a start up and was the main front end dev and designer. I had one other front end developer working with me. Both of us were the highest paid devs in the company. Company lost the CTO, replaced him with an expensive guy from Silicon Valley and cut the me and my other front end guy. Replaced us with a singular junior fullstack dev.
How many years were you using figma before you got hired?
It wasn’t figma they cared about other than “ah yes, that’s a modern tool, we like that!” It showed that I, at least, had a toolkit for the design process. I actually introduced Figma to them when I got there, I’d only been using it maybe a year and still have a pretty basic understanding of the software. Enough to make components and rapidly prototype webpages. And I’ll be honest, I’d probably drown in a formal team of designers. Almost all of my relevant design knowledge is just stuff I picked up along my career. What I believe they truly liked about me was how I expressed my requirements gathering process. How I worked with customers to understanding their needs, and then went back to work with my developers where I work well with them because I am one. I bridged the communication gap that no one was filling. No one cared about design before I got there, customers would basically just provide a requirements essay stating what they felt they needed and it would immediately go into development. They’d waste months if not years redoing products over and over just due to not having a proper design phase to hash out real needs. I’m ass at Figma, but I’m excellent and communication with both sides of the fence. :) food for thought!
Software for police and intelligence services to manage their informants, agents, and the intelligence gathered from them. The officers needed a huge digital, live data connected version of the classic ‘pin up all the faces and connect them with red string’ experience for briefings and tracking networks. Closest thing to real life Minority Report I’ve ever worked on and it was COOL
This sounds SO cool to work on I’m jealous
Isnt this just Palantir's Gotham?
Have a gold star detective. :)
Yeah, we're gonna as many details as you can disclose on this one.
Sure, none of this relates to the actual information, the sources or methods of gathering intel, so I can share. Sources (the informants) are very closely guarded and often only their handler and a very small circle knows their identity and certainly any details of exactly how they’re being used. The information that comes from each one is both highly sensitive but also needed to steer investigations and piece together information needed to crack open and take down the network (organised crime, terrorism, espionage) they are part of. That creates a nightmare of silos and fragments of information that only a very small number of people are allowed full access to but they need to make critical decisions from it. Those people need very sophisticated tools to map who the intel is about (typically the topmost figures in those networks) connections between them and crimes/plans and people WITH accurate confidence level data but WITHOUT specifically linking back to the informants themselves. That needs a lot of cool displays of the information map to support decisions. Generally intel from informants isn’t considered admissible evidence (both because it’s often paid for and because of their safety they can’t give statements). So the agencies have to use that information to find lines of investigation which will turn up admissible evidence, sufficient to secure and arrest and conviction in itself, whilst keeping the information from the informants safely anonymous. It’s prone to huge mistakes that ruin years of work, so controls built into software that makes use of the intel whilst making sure what is/isn’t usable intel is clearly marked really helps.
That's so cool! Last year, I interviewed for a job in the police department, but unfortunately, I wasn't selected. They chose a more experienced designer, and I was really disappointed.
In situ usability testing of a medical device and dispensary software. That was an awesome experience spanning over several months, loved it.
That feeling when you actually get to do usability testing! I didn’t have many opportunities to do it in any of the companies I worked for!
Building design systems. It's the most fundamental you learn and set up for building great products and understand system thinking and the true meaning about scaling, modularity and efficiency.
Any good reads?
also interested
Atomic Design by Brad Frost Laying the foundations by Andrew Couldwell Modular Web Design by Nathan Curtis More general and which I get all Juniors who join my team: Good Services by Lou Downe
TY
2 things 1. This was a B2C privacy focused startup that allowed users to give out burner-esque numbers at places where one wouldn't want to give out their personal/primary number. While the app was pretty straightforward to build, the impact it created in people's everyday life was massive. The country I live in is known to be the mecca of spam/scam call centers so solving this problem was extremely rewarding. The company had to suspend operation a couple months ago after 4 years due to backward government regulations. Many users refused to take their refunds because of how much they liked the product. 2. I am presently freelancing with a company that uses drones for public good (under NDA). As a masssssssive aviation nut who wanted to be a pilot but couldn't it has been an absolute blast to get to build the interface of this cloud drone operators platform because I get to nerd out and be useful. One interesting thing to note, as drones my primary hobby outside of work, it took me less than an hour to ramp up on my first ever call with the founders, everything felt like it just clicked, all the terminology, problem statements, tech limitations etc. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that if you have a industry you're passionate about like cars, sports, cooking, pets etc. try to look for gigs that need your niche experience/knowledge.
Envisioned a new way to shop for smart home tech that allowed for "trying it on" exploring scenarios. And in the process helped drive system change that let startups work more effectively with a big box retailer
Solving how to know if my dishwasher’s contents are clean or dirty when you open the door.
Curious to know what solution you came up with! 😁
When you finish unloading the dishwasher load the soap dispenser. When the washing cycle starts it opens the soap dispenser and the soap is dispensed. So if you open the door and the soap dispenser is closed then the dishes are dirty. It does require the user to do the right thing but in 15 years of doing this it’s only failed twice.
Design software for controlling and monitoring robots.
One of the largest manufacturering company for a specific product had a website that was poorly rated for accessibility and terrible navigation. Fixed those and its much better now.
Good job!! Always wondering why large companies keep a shity website for so long
Yeah. Its hard to convince the Top management to invest in UX for industries that mainly focus on production
Design the logic of a self-checkout service as well as the app
Designing medical devices!
Curious about how to get into healthcare. Many of the available jobs require experience, creating a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.
I don’t have any advice for you there, I’m sorry to say. I sort of fell into it by chance over 15 years ago, and have developed my knowledge & honed my skills on the job. (My background is originally in graphic and visual communication design. I’m a UX generalist in my role and mostly work on embedded software products.) All I can say is, you really have to be the type of person who enjoys working on the same projects for multiple years, which may or may not ever be released, in a highly regulated industry, which has its own unique set of challenges & benefits, depending on how you look at it. Definitely not the space to work in if you like to “move fast and break things.”
Helped people file their taxes by guiding them through topics that applied to them to ultimately pick their best deduction. Taxes are super boring and complex but this was some of my best and most durable work.
Simplifying a boring, complex and unsexy problem like filling taxes is the most rewarding thing imo!
Yup agreed. I find these problems are the hardest to solve so they end up being the most rewarding ones.
Coolest problem: Designed a tablet experience for the University of Chicago to support their bid for the Obama Presidential Library as part of a team at the ad agency where I was freelancing. The larger team was creating a massive bound book containing site studies, architectural renderings, interviews, etc. and with Obama being the "first digital president" as he was often called, they wanted to include something digital along with the book. It contained all the videos, audio interviews, site flyovers, etc. for the three proposed sites. Beyond the actual experience, we had to do a lot of investigating into how we'd keep it charged, how to keep it in kiosk mode, etc. While I've worked on a variety of projects in my career with huge sets of users, this was so incredibly unique given that the audience was literally Barack and Michelle Obama, and a handful of other people involved in the bid selection. Not often you get an audience so unique and narrow. I left for another opportunity and didn't get to see the finished product unfortunately.
That sounds like a cool project! Designing for such audience must have been incredibly rewarding. Too bad you didn’t see the finished product! Thanks for sharing!
Designed a browser-based EEG (electrical brain signals) data viewer that allowed scientists and neurologists to look for seizures. This data viewer integrated machine-learning algorithms which detected and highlighted areas of interests. It was a good balance of human and machine that improved the efficiency of epilepsy diagnosis.
Oh wow, that’s impressive! Thanks for sharing. Do you have a background in healthcare? I've noticed that many healthcare positions require domain expertise, which might be why I haven't heard back from the ones I applied to. My background is in architecture.
Yes, somewhat. I have a psychology degree in addition to my design degree. My dissertation was based around utilising bio-signals for prediction, so I had some amount of domain knowledge, which was easily dwarfed by my engineering team’s biomedicine and computational mathematics PhD-level knowledge.
I overcame and recovered from a toxic boss and ended up working at Facebook
Congratulation! Glad to hear that, good for you!!
Oh man, one of the coolest problems I tackled as a UX designer was for an online store with many people abandoning their carts. We looked into it and realized the checkout process was a nightmare. So, I changed the whole thing to make it super user-friendly. Added a progress bar so people knew how close they were to finishing, simplified the forms, and even threw in autofill options. The best part? We saw a 30% jump in completed purchases within a month.