ESG Flo

Validating the Problem and Market Opportunity

During my first month at ESG Flo, I led user interviews with sustainability managers to understand their day-to-day responsibilities and the challenges of compiling annual sustainability reports. Most teams relied on a mixture of Excel spreadsheets, email threads, and shared drives - a manual process that was slow, error-prone, and difficult to audit. Our team also conducted a competitive analysis to understand the existing ESG software landscape. What we found confirmed a major gap in the market: while there were tools for data visualization and reporting, none were truly designed to support end-to-end sustainability compliance.

Translating Regulation Into a Product Structure

After several whiteboarding sessions with Product, we aligned on the initial MVP feature set. From there, I focused on translating the complex CSRD regulatory framework into a clear information architecture.This step was critical as it creates the structural backbone of the product and ensures that our features mapped cleanly to real-world reporting requirements across multiple regulatory frameworks.

From Structure to Screens

With the information architecture in place, I moved quickly into low-fidelity wireframing. We had a board review scheduled three days later, so my goal was to translate the core workflows into clear, testable screens that demonstrated how the product would function end-to-end.

Aligning our MVP with ESG Flo's Brand Identity

Following several iterations of our low-fidelity wireframes, the next step was to elevate them to high fidelity. Collaborating closely with the Marketing team to ensure that our MVP aligned with the company's branding, I developed a style guide to ensure the color contrast of the product was in compliance with ADA and WCAG accessibility requirements.

Partnering With Engineering for a Smooth Product Launch

Throughout the MVP design process, I partnered closely with Product and Engineering to ensure the UI aligned with business goals and was technically feasible to implement. Given the complexity of ESG reporting, I focused on designing simple, clear workflows that would be intuitive for first-time users. By involving Engineering early and validating design decisions together, we reduced implementation risk and minimized design revisions later during build.

Building a Design System and Component Library

To support consistent implementation and scale future development, I created a lightweight design system and component library that documented the product’s foundational UI patterns and reusable components. This ensured alignment across design and engineering, reduced ambiguity during handoff, and helped accelerate feature delivery. I partnered closely with our Lead Front-End Developer to translate these components into Storybook.

Usability Testing and Product Refinement

To further refine and validate our product post-launch, I led a series of moderated usability testing sessions to gather qualitative feedback and identify opportunities to refine the product. Given the complexity of sustainability reporting workflows, I structured task-based sessions that focused on real-world reporting scenarios so I could observe behavior, uncover friction, and validate whether the product supported users’ mental models. Example tasks include:

• Populating a reporting metric within a regulatory framework
• Creating a message and tagging another user
• Uploading supporting documentation to a reporting metric

Before MVP Launch

Changes Following Usability Testing