How to Demonstrate Design Value: A CRM Redesign Case Study

Design Goals

Before any design work, designers must ask: What is the project goal? What problem does it solve? Who are the users?

Design goals should align with the product lifecycle, user pain points, and overall product objectives.

The existing EasySale CRM had an outdated interaction style, high maintenance costs, and long business wait cycles. By aligning closely with product goals, we set three main objectives: modular design, increased development productivity, and reduced business waiting time.

Data Mining

Understanding the product, competitors, and user characteristics provides the data foundation for design decisions. Gathering this data often requires coordination across teams, and some data may be outdated.

We collected and interpreted data points such as CRM interface event tracking, user heatmaps, six months of feedback, and conducted market research on mature CRM systems to capture the latest interaction trends and innovative features.

We also conducted user research with questionnaires, interviews, and recordings to capture real user demands.

Design Collaboration

Designers work closely with teammates, discussing ideas and maintaining a horizontal business perspective. Collaboration with product, engineering, and operations is essential for understanding related business contexts.

For the complex middle‑office CRM, we held multiple offline meetings with product and engineering, summarizing conclusions in internal documents for quick reference and continuous design iteration.

Design Exploration

The redesign goes beyond a simple visual refresh; we reorganized frequently used data modules, applied modular design, and produced various table and chart styles to improve information retrieval efficiency.

We rebuilt icons, illustrations, buttons, inputs, and cards, and packaged basic components into reusable modules, enabling rapid page assembly and boosting development productivity.

Design Proposal

Before development, the design draft must be internally approved. Designers need to present their proposals like a product, emphasizing both visual appeal and underlying quality.

The proposal should break down the design into modules, explain how it meets the set goals, addresses user pain points identified in research, and highlight innovative and breakthrough points that demonstrate the designer’s value.

Result Verification

After finalizing the design, we establish metrics to measure design value, aligning them with the original goals. Metrics include precise indicators (e.g., page views, click‑through rates) and broader indicators (e.g., design efficiency, collaboration cost reduction).

For EasySale CRM, we track embedded page data, gather user feedback, and periodically review module details to inform future iterations.

Knowledge Sharing

Post‑project, we summarize encountered problems and solutions, sharing them within the team to provide references for similar challenges, improve design efficiency, and enhance communication skills.

This practice also helps build professional maturity and design influence, maximizing design value.