Creating a Shared Vision for a Unified Platform
Leading the strategic narrative to align product, engineering, and design leadership around a future-state customer experience
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Creating a Shared Vision for a Unified Platform
Leading the strategic narrative to align product, engineering, and design leadership around a future-state customer experience
There’s something here… but this case study works best on a bigger device.
Full content is available on screens wider than 900px.
Creating a Shared Vision for a Unified Platform
Leading the strategic narrative to align product, engineering, and design leadership around a future-state customer experience
Overview
Over the years, DocuSign had grown beyond eSignature into a handful of agreement and contract tools. Each one solved a real problem, but they were built at different times, by different teams, with different assumptions. Customers felt that fragmentation in the seams between tools, and internally, “platform” meant something different depending on who you asked.
Vision documents existed, but they weren’t telling the same story. Some were aspirational, some were reactive, yet none of them aligned into a single arc. The organization needed a direction that reflected the reality of its products today while making space for where they needed to go next.
Role
Lead Product Designer, Platform
Opportunity
Create a platform experience that feels unified to users while also giving internal teams a shared model they can actually build and maintain
Impact
Aligned product and design teams towards a 3-5 year delivery plan of the Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform, launched in 2025
Challenge
To make meaningful progress, I had to reconcile two realities from internal and external lenses.
Internal reality (org & product)
Each product team had its own mental model of how agreements should move through the system.
Teams solved similar problems in different ways, rebuilt the same moments, and made decisions based on conflicting assumptions. The result was a platform in name, but not in practice.
External Reality (users)
Legal, sales, and operations teams were juggling agreement work across multiple products, inboxes, and workflows.
There was no clear source of truth, no consistent path through the lifecycle, and too many places where work could stall or get lost.
Approach
Throughout this project, my work was focused on untangling overlapping workflows, aligning teams on the moments that mattered most, and shaping a platform direction that felt buildable and sustainable across both the internal and external realities we uncovered.
Leading this work meant navigating org politics, surfacing difficult truths, and aligning executive stakeholders around a new future, which accompanied the following key activities:
Understand the System
Audited 4 core products to uncover redundant features and overlapping delivery
Understand the System
Audited 4 core products to uncover redundant features and overlapping delivery
Listen Across Teams
Interviewed Product and Eng teams to understand delivery commitments & opportunities
Listen Across Teams
Interviewed Product and Eng teams to understand delivery opportunities
Model User Behaviors
Interviewed end users and mapped their workflows around a clear set of their jobs-to-be-done
Model User Behaviors
Interviewed end users and mapped their workflows around jobs-to-be-done
Structure the Lifecycle
Defined key moments across the agreement lifecycle to anchor teams on a consistent direction
Structure the Lifecycle
Defined key moments across the agreement lifecycle to anchor direction
Craft the Vision
Created narrative, storyboards, and high-fidelity artifacts that illustrated a unified platform
Craft the Vision
Created storyboards and high-fidelity artifacts that illustrated a unified platform
Influence the Roadmap
Laid the groundwork and influenced delivery for Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM)
Influence the Roadmap
Laid the groundwork and for Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM)
Insights
We talked with admins, end users, and internal teams to understand where things were breaking down—both in the tools and in the way they were built. A few themes came up quickly.
Internal reality (org & product)
Lack of Ownership
When I sell multiple products to customers, I want it to automatically work like an integrated platform.
Feature Redundancy
We have so many ways to accomplish the same thing. We're often our own primary competitor.
Disjointed Architecture
Sometimes I'll work on a feature for months just to find out another team is working on it, too.
Lack of ownership
Sometimes I'll work on a feature for months just to find out another team is working on it, too.
Lack of ownership
Sometimes I'll work on a feature for months just to find out another team is working on it, too.
Feature Redundancy
We have so many ways to accomplish the same thing. We're often our own primary competitor.
Feature Redundancy
We have so many ways to accomplish the same thing. We're often our own primary competitor.
disjointed architecture
When I sell multiple products to customers, I want it to work like a platform instead of a manual data integration.
disjointed architecture
When I sell multiple products to customers, I want it to work like a platform instead of a manual data integration.
External Reality (users)
Constant Relearning
Every product is different and I have to relearn the basics each time. It gets annoying.
Lack of Transparency
Finding agreements takes longer than acting on them, especially when I can't see what my team has executed.
Complicated Workflows
I keep having trainings with IT and they still don’t know how to find agreements… I waste so much time on this.
Constant Relearning
Every product is different and I have to relearn the basics each time. It gets annoying.
Constant Relearning
Every product is different and I have to relearn the basics each time. It gets annoying.
Lack of Transparency
Finding agreements takes longer than acting on them, especially when I can't see what my team has executed.
Lack of Transparency
Finding agreements takes longer than acting on them, especially when I can't see what my team has executed.
Complicated Workflows
I keep having trainings with IT and they still don’t know how to find agreements… I waste so much time on this.
Complicated Workflows
I keep having trainings with IT and they still don’t know how to find agreements… I waste so much time on this.
Solution
The solution had to work on two levels: it needed to feel coherent and dependable for end users, and it needed to give internal teams a shared model they could actually build against. I brought together research, workflows, and existing ideas into a direction that clarified:
what the platform should support
how agreement workflows should connect
which moments should feel unified
where flexibility still made sense
how customers should enter, navigate, and finish agreement work
Storyboards
An illustrated version of the narrative moments, used for alignment and gathering feedback on the user story.
Make it easy for me to complete my day-to-day responsibilities
View documents across multiple accounts in one place without logging in and out to stay on top of critical activity
Guide me through streamlining my department workflows
Design and build all the agreement process that will enable your teams to operate without switching systems or disrupting business
Help me resolve complex business challenges
Have your data in a system that understands agreements that aids with discovery, diligence, compliance or audit activities
Global Inbox
A single entry point for agreement tasks across products and accounts.
Internal reality
Teams were maintaining separate notification models and inbox surfaces, creating redundant effort and inconsistent behavior.
external reality
Users needed one place to see what required their attention in the context of multiple products, accounts, and teams.
Solution
See and act on what needs attention across multiple products
Quickly initiate or build holistic agreement workflows
Filter between multiple workspaces without losing context
Consolidated Workflow Builder
A shared framework for simple and complex agreement flows.
Internal reality
Each product team had implemented its own routing, approval, and agreement workflow logic.
external reality
Real agreement workflows crossed tools, roles, and departments.
Solution
Centralize product capabilities in a single workflow engine
Build both simple and complex agreement workflows
Enable easy activation and adoption for expanded product features
Unified Repository
One place to see and act on agreements across accounts and teams.
Internal reality
Agreement data was scattered across multiple systems, each with its own visibility model..
external reality
Users couldn’t reliably find the latest agreement, see its full history, or ensure compliance and renewals.
Solution
View all agreements in one location
Search by parties, counterparties, or lifecycle stage
Use AI to highlight what needs attention and surface smart, predictive actions
This direction came to life through early workflows, patterns, and scenarios that helped teams understand how a unified platform could work in practice.
These weren’t meant as final UI—they were shared references that helped teams visualize how the platform should behave. They became the basis for cross-team conversations and ultimately informed the company’s shift toward IAM.
Outcomes
For me, success looks like alignment that sticks—when teams actually reference the strategy or decision frameworks later.
On the business side, I look at how the work shifted direction, unblocked teams, or set up a more scalable approach, not just the immediate feature metrics.
Inevitably, this work helped re-center the organization around a single platform direction.
Secured buy-in from senior leadership to move forward with a platform strategy.
Aligned product and design teams and helped identify their first step towards a 3-5 year delivery plan.
Ignited a development team to explore a platform architecture supporting shared services, navigation, and design patterns
Launched cross-functional teams focused on developing inbox, workflow, and repository proofs of concepts to test the consolidated platform architecture.
Sparked new conversations across sales, pricing, and marketing about operational shifts needed.
Served as the groundwork for Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), released three years later in 2025
© Copyright 2026. Kim Harris.
© Copyright 2026. Kim Harris.
© Copyright 2026. Kim Harris.
© Copyright 2026. Kim Harris.