In this testimonial, Sachin Sharma, founder and CEO of ProcureDesk, explains the design challenges his product faced—an inconsistent, fragmented user interface and a dated visual look that hindered usability and prospect perception. He describes how his team partnered with the design agency User Interact to map out redesign objectives, prioritize key product areas, and create a modern look‑and‑feel. The process involved detailed usability analysis of specific use cases, close collaboration with designers, and systematic validation of design choices through customer feedback. Sharma praises the agency’s organized, responsive workflow, the constructive pushback that helped refine decisions, and the feeling that the designers acted as an extension of his in‑house team. He recommends that companies, especially startups lacking strong internal design capabilities, engage a design agency early in the product lifecycle to avoid costly redesigns later.
Chapters
So I'm Sachin Sharma. I'm the founder and CEO of ProCare Desk, where we help growing companies automate their processes around purchasing and accounts payable. So when you first started working with User Interactive, I think the problem we were facing was our product has grown over a period of time, but the user interface was highly inconsistent. A lot of the time, developers added screens directly. Sometimes, you know, we have multiple designers who worked on it over a period of time, and it just turns out to be. It's a, you know, it's a mesh of everything. Right. So the design doesn't look consistent. There is no usability concerns that were addressed. There were many usability concerns which, you know, we kind of try to also solve over a period of time, but it was not solved. Right. But then I would say that was one main area where we were struggling with. The second was the look and feel of the product. It looked very dated. So a lot of times we would get this feedback from prospects where they would say, oh, you know, it looks so dated. There's no color scheme, that there's no good contrast, and so on. So I would say those were the two things we were struggling with. One is the inconsistency in the user design, and second is the look and feel of the product. So I think User Interact team, I think we work with them, like, in terms of designing, like the roadmap of, okay, what are the key objectives of this redesign? What are we trying to achieve? And then obviously, you know, what are the key areas of the product we want to focus on first? Right. And, you know, kind of work on that. So I think one doing that design session was very helpful to kind of say, okay, these are the top areas where we need to focus on in the beginning, defining why are we doing this redesign, identifying the look and feel on the day one and said, or in the first few days working together and said, this is what a modern look and feel looks like. And then everything. From a usability standpoint, we work in very detail in terms of identifying the specific use cases, what are the usability challenges in each of those screens, and then work closely with the designers to come up with new designs. And also as a part of that, what we also did was seek feedback from our customers, which was very well received. So that way we knew we are on the right track. From an approach standpoint, I'm super happy working with the team, very well organized, I think. And even for that matter, the designers take the pain to understand the use case. And if you give some Feedback. They're always kind of looking and said, okay, what is driving that? One thing though I liked a lot was the pushback I got from the team in a positive way. Right. So a lot of times you're trying to drive the, the decision and say no, no, this should look this way. Right. And the team was, you know, in a very polite way, I'll just say, okay, this is not the standard. Here's the reason why we designed it this way. And you know, a good example of that is, you know, we, we always used to see our invoice document on the left. The design had a new design headed document on the right. And I just kept on saying, I was like, okay, this doesn't make sense. You know, we're so used to seeing it. And the designer working on, on that was said no, this should be fine. We have seen this in multiple times. So the only way for us to validate that, we took it to the customer and said, do you care? And the answer was no. So I think that was one good aspect of is not just about doing the design but also understanding what is working across other projects so we can get that expertise which we are missing in house. Right. When you only focused on one project, I would say it felt like more that the team is the know, an extension of the my in house team. Right. So it doesn't feel like you're working with a third party. So and, and the work is very organized. Right. So we spend, you know, one, you know, one hour, one and a half hour every 15 days to review the sprint and the team keeps on sending, you know, feedback and then in between if they have done some work, they want to get some, you know, feedback, they can do that pretty quickly. So I would say it's pretty responsive. I didn't feel like, you know, I have to kind of always push. They're always, you know, on target on what they want to do and yeah, super happy with that. So absolutely. I think I recommend to everyone who's looking for design, I think in a specific use case, I would say where you don't have a strong in house team, I think that's a gap user actor can fill pretty quickly. And also I would say in the beginning if you're just a startup and you're just coming up a new product concept, it's always tempting to just let's pick a theme and go with it versus engaging a design agency to kind of work with you on day one. I think it's worth the investment even for startups, if I do another startup or if I'm launching a new product, that's the approach I would follow myself. So absolutely, absolutely no reason not to. So we are always coming up with new concepts or new products and I think that's know that's the approach we will follow working with the team to come up with concepts, designs and then actually work on it rather than work on something and then change it later.
