Leading the redesign of a non-profit governance tool to optimize flow & usability
JAN 2025
Client
B2B web application
Non-profit organizations
Governance compliance & efficiency
TL;DR
I led a redesign of BoardSpace’s core features: the agenda builder, meetings home page, and minute recording process.
My team delivered a successful prototype that reduced task complexity and fully complied with the company’s refreshed UI design system.
The problem
BoardSpace: rich in features, overwhelming to users
The web platform supported all essential board meeting functions, but many features were built from a sole developer’s perspective.
Users consistently struggled with cluttered layouts, confusing minute recording process, and a document building tool that did not match common design conventions.
My role
Design lead, team of 3 designers
Established scope & project timeline
Managed the end-to-end design process
Led weekly client check-ins
Built primary prototype flows
Delivered final presentation to CEO + devs
Tools:
Figma, Miro, Riipen
Team
Rosa Angelova
Student UX/UI Designer
Shital Chourikar
Student UX/UI Designer
Michael Samuel
Student UX/UI Designer
Client collaboration
Weekly meetings and touch points helped keep us aligned
We regularly met with BoardSpace’s CEO and internal team. Their feedback was crucial in helping us understand the product, its users, and what was technically feasible within our project roadmap.
I want to create a board management software that is so easy to use, you don’t even realize you are using it.
Make all key elements (like presenters, motions, and actions) more prominent and accessible.
Research & insights
We used previous user research data and made it actionable
Since BoardSpace had a wealth of user research previously conducted, we rolled up our sleeves and got into the nitty gritty of data synthesis.
Affinity mapping, empathy maps, and personas were just some of the techniques we used to really understand frustrations and opportunities.
Key findings
Overwhelming number of screens and clicks to complete tasks
Unintuitive and rigid agenda builder
Hard to locate and time consuming minutes recording feature
Confusion about statuses of meetings, document attachments, and roles
Personas
Our personas served as a backboard to our design decisions
Dionne C, 56
HOA secretary who values clarity and simplicity.
Bob H, 71
Board member juggling tech and tasks across devices.
Competitive analysis
We benchmarked BoardSpace against 3 leading competitors
Figuring out industry best practices was a huge part of the puzzle of successfully redesigning a tool focused on rules, compliance, and role-specific functions.
Intuitive UI, & document management
Weak meeting workflows
Clear, modular task structure
Low customization flexibility
Comprehensive feature set
Cluttered interface & steep learning curve
Heuristic audit
Meetings home page
Before designing anything, we diagnosed the system
We took a really close inspection of BoardSpace’s existing experiences and identified any usability violations based on Nielsen’s principles.
Aesthetic and minimalist design: multiple colors and columns created big visual hierarchy issues and confusion as to which elements were most important.
Agenda document builder
Match between system and real world: this layout did not reflect any standard document-building models, making this our largest task yet.
Recording meeting minutes
User control and freedom: forcing users to exit the minute taking flow to make basic changes, like editing presenter or duration, created a major workflow disruption.
The redesign
We tackled 3 main areas: meetings, agendas, and minutes
We based our designs around a simulated nonprofit board, which acted almost as a third persona, which helped us refine the system based on our user needs. We also aligned with BoardSpace’s new UI system for consistency.
Meetings home page
We brought a simplified structure with clearer CTAs, status indicators, and templates.
Chevrons simplify the interface by displaying only most important meeting information.
✅ Expandable meeting feature
Agenda document builder
Focused on page restructuring to resemble more familiar document builder models.
Items and sub-items can be reordered with a drag and drop action.
✅ Drag & drop functionality
Uncommon actions like preview, print, and template change are tucked away for a cleaner interface.
✅ Secondary actions hidden in kebab
Upload files and attach them to items or sub-items with drag and drop functionality.
✅ Attachment manager
Present/absent toggle reduces clicks, requiring action only for absent members.
✅ Simplified attendance tracking
Components were translated into a simplified format to improve clarity and accessibility.
Sync all changes to both minutes and agenda without switching screens.
Record motions, approvals, and decisions with more clearly defined buttons.
✅ Integrated motions & actions
Users can edit as well as track dynamic meeting durations from persistent toolbars.
Redesigned as a single, scrollable view with no more jumping between screens.
Clicking on an agenda item automatically scrolls to the corresponding section in the minutes document.
✅ Single scrollable page
✅ Redesigned modular layout
Meetings are now grouped by "Current" and "Approved" categories, reducing clutter.
✅ Introduced tab structure
Buttons now show only the main document, with all supporting ones moved to the kebab menu.
✅ Single document display
✅ Floating header & footer toolbars
Recording meeting minutes
✅ All edits done on one page
The outcome
Our prototype was enthusiastically approved & is in development
In 5 short weeks, my team and I managed:
Dev friendly mockups and protypes ready for implementation
Clearer workflows for all roles and any board size
Simplified the ‘meetings’ home page
Easier agenda and minutes management
Designed with the updated UI style guide
“This is exactly what we were hoping for. The new design feels user-friendly without losing functionality.”
– Pat C, CEO
Learnings
I became part-time design lead, full-time cheerleader
Leading this project was a wild ride with plenty of pushback from both stakeholders and my own team. Balancing conflicting opinions on both sides of the table meant keeping everyone on the same page, enganged, and most importantly happy. I did lots of delegating based on the individual strengths of my team and even had to fight against some of their personal roadblocks. But in the end, I watched us rise above and crush the delivery of our prototype to a client who had been looking for a solution that had eluded three previous teams. It is still an incredible feeling!
Working with imperfect UX & client collab
Collaborating with Pat, the founder and CEO, and Jeff, the developer, was a highlight of the project. Our weekly meetings were invaluable. Hearing their feedback and iterating over three sprints truly shaped the end result.
I’ll be the first to admit- our design wasn’t perfect. Since we only tackled part of the design process and didn’t conduct our own user interviews and usability testing, there were some areas of imperfect UX. But we created a solution that not only worked and made our client happy, but helped set the stage for future improvements.
