From navigation hub to daily habit

Value clients weren’t finding

Gartner helps business and IT leaders make decisions with research, analysis and advice. Our analysis showed clients weren’t exploring most of what their subscription offered — which meant shorter sessions and, eventually, clients leaving the platform.

My role

As experience lead, I led a team of UX and UI designers and a researcher. I set strategic direction with product and business and guided the design team’s work — while staying hands-on: running usability tests, gathering feedback and iterating on designs myself.

What we learned

A personalised home page already existed, so the question was why it wasn’t working. Interviews pointed to two things.

It kind of constrains me to things I’ve already expressed an interest in, versus letting me explore the universe of content available to me.Gartner client

• Value was hard to discover. Personalising too much trapped users in content they’d already seen.
• Needs were short-term. Users came for what mattered this week, not long-term goals — and those needs changed fast.

How we worked

1. Ground the team in the journeyA double-diamond approach anchored on the returning user’s journey.
2. Align through workshopsLed design, engineering, data and product through design-thinking workshops to agree goals, map the journey, sketch and prioritise.
3. Concept and testDesigned core screens and tested them with clients, iterating on what they told us.

The direction

The home page moved from a navigation hub to the main place clients get value: personalised insights for their role and short-term priorities, plus a deliberate way to explore beyond them. The vision was a page that builds a daily habit by helping clients stay ahead in their role.

What I’d do differently

Some technical constraints surfaced late in design. Bringing engineering in at concept stage would have made delivery smoother — that lesson became the pre-grooming practice I introduced later at R1.

What I learned

Personalising everything can feel monotonous. Users need a way to step outside their own context — relevance and discovery have to be designed together.