Story-led case study · Strategy · Leadership · Outcomes
YOOBIC · Head of Product Design · 2018 — 2025
Not just the screens — the strategy, the org and the craft bar behind them. I turned a fragmented 30-module platform into an AI-first frontline experience, and held every decision to a number: adoption, speed and engagement all moved.
This page tells the story first. The visuals below are a representative glimpse — out of respect for YOOBIC's competitive confidentiality, deeper screens, performance metrics and unreleased work remain available only on request.
What the design decisions actually moved
Most portfolio case studies are screenshots stitched together with retroactive narrative. This one isn't. Over seven years I led design at the same company through three distinct strategy eras — IPO-track growth, pandemic-era frontline criticality, and an AI re-platforming — and in each one the job was the same: read where the business needed to go, then set the design direction to get it there.
That meant working hypothesis-first — using research, analytics and customer insight to decide what to build, not just how it looked — and being accountable for the result: faster task completion, higher training engagement, shorter onboarding. The screens changed three times. The discipline of tying every design decision to a measurable business outcome didn't.
Each started as a hypothesis, was validated with research and analytics, and was held accountable to a number. Strategy first — the system and the screens followed.
The hypothesis: people weren't slow because the product lacked features — they were slow because nothing shared a mental model. We unified navigation and redesigned the core workflows across modules, then validated against task-time analytics.
I drove the exec-level conversation on where the assistant (NEO) should suggest, decide or stay silent — and embedded it inside learning rather than beside it, so it changed behaviour instead of decorating the UI.
YOBI went from a Figma library to 200+ governed components with documentation, tokens and accessibility baked in — turning design–dev friction into shared velocity and cutting the time it took new joiners to ship.
I joined YOOBIC as the platform was already feature-rich: thirty-plus modules spanning task execution, communication and learning. Functionally rich, structurally fractured. There was no real navigation system. No design system. No design org in the modern sense. The first job wasn't to redesign anything — it was to understand why a product this useful felt this hard.
Three workstreams in parallel. YOBI, the design system, started as a Figma library and grew into 200+ components across six libraries with documentation, naming conventions and accessibility standards baked in. The team went from a small design function to a structured org with clear seniority ladders, rituals and a shared craft bar. Information architecture got its first principled rewrite — a unified navigation logic across modules so a store associate and a regional manager weren't fighting two different mental models.
When stores closed and reopened weekly, frontline workflow went from a business-improvement product to a business-continuity product. The mobile experience had to absorb that pressure overnight: faster task surfaces, clearer communication primitives, learning content that worked offline. We compressed a multi-quarter mobile roadmap into months without breaking the design system or the team. That period set the bar for how the org operates under pressure.
The product strategy moved from "task platform with reporting" to "AI-assisted frontline experience". That's not a feature — that's a re-platforming. Design had to lead a different conversation: what does an assistant feel like inside a checklist? When does AI suggest, when does it decide, when does it stay silent? How do you keep the design system honest when half the new patterns don't have an established language yet? The answer wasn't a single launch — it was a year of pattern-building, careful ethics work, and teaching the org to design around the model rather than on top of it.
Today, the design organisation runs on a system, a craft bar, and a culture of taste that didn't exist when I joined. The product has shipped through three distinct strategy eras with the same foundational language. That continuity — not any single screen — is the work I'd point a hiring manager at.
Less "ran the design team", more setting direction and influencing the organisation — the part of the role that lives beyond programme delivery and systems work.
Methodology
Every solution was grounded in user research and validated before it shipped — a structured, iterative loop with clear objectives at each phase, not a linear handoff.
Mapped the entire YOOBIC ecosystem — how Work, Communication, and Learn modules connected across industries and roles. This surfaced navigation bottlenecks and redundant flows before a single wireframe was drawn, and made the IA problem legible to product and engineering at the same time.
Quick sketches and wireframes explored multiple navigation layouts and Newsfeed configurations before committing to a visual direction. Fast to discard, fast to test, fast to align across product and engineering — no pixel investment before the structure was validated.
The story is the point — but here is what the three pillars actually feel like in the hand, and the tools the team built behind them. Representative screens, shared with permission.
Verbatim LinkedIn recommendations from people I worked with at YOOBIC. See all on LinkedIn →
“For seven years, Arcangelo stayed focused, resilient under pressure, and showed strong commitment to every key project. […] You never refused any of our many requests, no matter how tight the deadlines were.”
“I worked with Arcangelo for 5 years at YOOBIC, where we collaborated on building the company's design system from the ground up. […] Arcangelo consistently focused on design consistency and contributed to key conversations around accessibility, tokens, and visual standards.”
“I had the pleasure of working with Arcangelo at YOOBIC on our dashboard and AI agent projects, and I can confidently say he's a standout design leader. His creative vision and knack for turning complex ideas into clear, engaging designs made all the difference.”
A few of the 350+ global brands whose frontline teams run on YOOBIC.
Screens, design system internals and product metrics are available on request, under a light NDA.