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Content Cloud Platform Redesign

Unlock the full value of your content

TOOL: Figma

ROLE: UX designer

DURATION: Milestone 1: Q2 2023
Milestone 2: Q2  2024
Milestone 3: Q4 2024

Product

Content Innovation Cloud is a cloud-native platform designed to modernize enterprise content management through AI-powered automation and insights. It helps organizations streamline workflows, extract actionable data, and integrate content across various systems, including third-party repositories. Key components of the platform include:

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Challenge

In my early days at the company, there was little understanding of design’s role. For the first year, my leader and I were confined to executing features rather than engaging in strategic design thinking. Nevertheless, we advocated for a design-first approach, which gained traction with the arrival of the new Chief Product Officer. Once concerns about company structure and development processes were addressed, we helped position design as a strategic asset, enabling us to tackle user pain points and enhance the overall user experience of Content Cloud.

Responsibilities
 

  • Aligning design solutions with business goals and technical requirements by collaborating with product managers, product owners, architects, and developers.

  • Validating user-centered designs through interviews and usability testing in close partnership with researchers.

  • Maintaining consistency and enhanced design quality by working with other designers and the design system team.

  • Developing and refining designs, creating low- and high-fidelity mockups and prototypes, iterating based on feedback and testing.

Problem

The existing solution offered little value beyond basic file storage, making it not competitive in the market. It not only functioned as just another file repository, but it also lacked essential features—critical for effective content management. However, through collaboration with a UX researcher, we identified these key user problems:

Users struggle to manage content across multiple repositories, dealing with both structured and unstructured data. Key challenges include:

  • Inefficient Document Retrieval: Difficulty finding documents spread across multiple systems such as OneDrive, SharePoint, and various CRMs.

  • Limited Information Access: Challenges in quickly locating and retrieving relevant data.

  • Data Cross-Referencing Issues: Difficulty consolidating content from multiple sources, leading to duplicate information and gaps.

  • ​Accuracy in Data Retrieval: The need for precise, comprehensive answers from all available content and data.

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My content is everywhere and I need a smarter way to use it!

Milestone 1: Enhancing the Repository Experience


Initially, the focus was on enhancing the repository experience, as it was considered too basic to meet the complex needs of our users. The goal was to make it more intuitive, efficient, and functional. Key improvements we delivered included:

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  • Search: Upgraded with a content categorisation system. Users assigned categories (e.g., "Invoices") during upload, improving retrieval accuracy.

  • Versioning: Introduced auto-saved file versions, eliminating the need for manual versioning.

  • Content Viewer: Previously limited to basic zoom in/out functionality, the viewer was upgraded with:

    • Annotations, comments, thumbnails, bookmarks, and redactions for better document interaction.

    • AI-powered features like document-based Q&A, smart summaries, and contextual insights.

  • File Management: Improved copying, moving, and uploading, integrating file categorisation to refine search and retrieval.

  • Permissions: Developed a user and group-based system for precise access control and enhanced security.

This phase allowed us to revive a subpar offering to meet market standards, though it was not without issues...

Before

After

Milestone 2: Redefining the Product – From File Storage to a True Content Solution

Even though the repository experience had been significantly improved, the changes we delivered only managed to bring it up to par with existing competitors and still lacked meaningful value. With no product manager in place, my leader and I took a step back to redefine the product’s value proposition.
 

Through collaboration with a UX researcher, we uncovered key user pain points, including:

  • Inefficient Document Retrieval: Difficulty finding documents spread across multiple systems such as OneDrive, SharePoint, and various CRMs.

  • Limited Information Access: Challenges in quickly locating and retrieving relevant data.

  • Data Cross-Referencing Issues: Difficulty consolidating content from multiple sources, leading to duplicate information and gaps.

  • ​Accuracy in Data Retrieval: The need for precise, comprehensive answers from all available content and data.
     

This realisation sparked a major transformation, shifting the product from basic storage to an intelligent content management and discovery solution. Key innovations included:
 

  • Repository Flexibility – Instead of forcing users into our system, we introduced the ability to connect external repositories like OneDrive and SharePoint, enabling powerful cross-repository search without migrating data.

  • Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) – Uploading was reimagined with automated content categorisation and metadata extraction, ensuring files were automatically labeled and easier to retrieve later.

  • AI-Powered Search – Search was transformed from a basic file lookup to a smart data discovery tool, capable of understanding user intent, and surfacing the most relevant insights instead of just file name. 
     

This milestone marked a turning point—our product was no longer just a repository but an intelligent content solution, offering seamless integration, smarter search, and automated content organization.​​

Following the unveiling of my prototype at a customer event, we generated significant interest, resulting in numerous beta sign-ups. The overwhelmingly positive feedback confirmed that we're addressing genuine pain points, establishing our product as an essential content management solution.

Milestone 3: Unifying the Experience

The final challenge was that Content Cloud felt disconnected from the wider platform. Having worked across different platform areas, including Intelligent Document Processing and Governance system, I gained crucial insights into how the platform should really work. This comprehensive understanding revealed that users experienced Content Cloud as a separate product rather than part of a cohesive system, with navigation being particularly frustrating. To fix this, we:

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  • Revamped the Global Navigation – A complete redesign that made navigation more intuitive and unified across the platform.

  • ​Integrated Content Cloud at the core – We elevated it to a main-level experience, rather than a standalone tool.

  • ​Introduced Split View – We started to treat the platform like an OS, allowing users to work fluidly across content management, record management, and other applications without friction.

  • Incorporated the new Design System – Using Material Design 3, we created a modern, consistent interface across all product areas.
     

This transformation not only unified the experience and set our platform apart from competitors but delivered a more polished, cohesive, and user-friendly interface, making it simpler for users to navigate and fully leverage the platform's capabilities.

Breaking free from isolated parts of the platform, we transformed Content Cloud into a unified workspace where every capability feels like part of a single, fluid system.

Takeways

  1. Strategic Design Thinking: I learned that designers can lead product direction even without a PM. Our initial feature-focused approach was inefficient; integrating design thinking early on would have accelerated progress and saved us from costly rework.
     

  2. Research-Driven Innovation: This project reinforced that user research is crucial for complex enterprise products. By deeply understanding users' content management pain points, we transformed a simple file storage system into a valuable solution that met real needs.
     

  3. Holistic Product Understanding: I realised that the siloed team structure significantly hinders product development, especially when it comes to maintaining consistency and delivering a good user experience. Milestone 3's success was possible only because of my understanding of the entire platform, gained through my involvement in different areas like the Intelligent Document Processing or the Governance System.
     

  4. Customer Validation as Motivation: The positive feedback from customers at our demo event not only validated our efforts but also gave our team a great boost. It motivated me to keep working on the product and stay focused on making it even better for our users.
     

Next steps:
 

  1. Conduct continuous user testing and feedback loops to fine-tune features, ensuring the product evolves based on real user needs.

  2. Ensure cross-platform consistency so that users can easily transition between devices and still have a seamless experience.

  3. Focus on scalability, ensuring the platform can handle growing volumes of data and more complex content management needs as users' businesses expand.

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If you have any feedback, want to collaborate or just want to say hello, let’s get in touch!

© 2025 by Wiktoria Romek

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