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Railing, Dock & Deck Designer

Redesign flagship SaaS serving 20+ enterprise customers

This CAD-adjacent product allows enterprise customers to quickly configure structures and get an accurate estimate of the cost.

Built and shipped primarily by engineers, it had never had a real dedicated design pass, and so for customers experiencing the free trial, I knew their experience was below other similar apps they’d be looking at.

I had some downtime, so decided to redesign the whole thing.

The shipped redesign: 2D canvas with a cable railing run selected and the collection panel open The initial UI before the redesign: the live editor with a railing layout placed
Before After

Broad exploration led to a clear direction

The project had some basic designs, but these had been quickly implemented and built-upon to meet the real needs of customers. The code for various elements came from 2-3 different codebases, and the layout had been pushed and grown in ways it wasn’t really prepared for.

I spent about a week with Claude exploring many different directions — both the editor and the backend app — then honed in on one and iterated within the browser with Claude Code until I had something clear enough I could show leadership.

Exploration iteration 1 Exploration iteration 2 Exploration iteration 3 Exploration iteration 4 Exploration iteration 5 Exploration iteration 6 Exploration iteration 7 Exploration iteration 8 Exploration iteration 9 Exploration iteration 10 Exploration iteration 11 Exploration iteration 12 Exploration iteration 13 Exploration iteration 14 Exploration iteration 15

Leadership buy-in and a shipped redesign

Leadership was thrilled, and immediately put resources behind an effort to push the redesign into the world.

With two colleagues working under my direction, we pushed out a redesign for an app that serves 20+ enterprise customers, consolidates and streamlines styling and code, and has opened up the door for additional discussions with partners about additional development work.

The 2D plan view with a cable railing run selected and the railing collection panel open
Detail work: controls, color swatches, alignment guides, and the discounted price highlighted in mock handwriting