Northwind · Process

The full process

The research, personas and flows behind Northwind. The case study covers the decisions; this is the work underneath them.

02 — User Research

User Personas & Goals

Northwind serves a dual-track enterprise evaluation process. The VP Operations evaluates business value. The IT Director evaluates security and compliance. The Operations Manager evaluates usability. All three must be satisfied by the same landing page.

👤
Sarah Mitchell
VP Operations at Enterprise, 45
Goals
  • Single workflow visibility across 12 departments
  • Automated exception handling with escalation paths
  • Full audit trail for compliance reporting
Pain Points
  • 6 separate automation tools with no unified view
  • Silent failures discovered by customers before internal teams
🧑
Rajesh Kumar
IT Director, 38
Goals
  • SAML SSO with existing Identity Provider
  • Data residency in EU region
  • Role-based access control per workflow
Pain Points
  • Consumer-grade tools slipping into enterprise workflows without IT visibility
  • No way to enforce security policies across automation tools
👩
Emma Walsh
Operations Manager, 31
Goals
  • Build complex multi-step workflows without IT involvement
  • Pre-built templates for common operations processes
  • Real-time status dashboard for all active workflows
Pain Points
  • Current tools require engineering support for any workflow change
  • No visibility into why a workflow failed

03 — Business Challenges

Core Challenges

CHALLENGE 01
🗺️
Complexity Without Intimidation

Enterprise workflow platforms are genuinely complex. A landing page that shows all the complexity immediately loses the ops manager. A page that hides it loses the IT evaluator. The design had to show depth at the right moment in the scroll hierarchy.

CHALLENGE 02
🔒
The Enterprise Trust Battery

Enterprise buyers run parallel evaluation tracks: the business user (does this solve my problem?) and the IT/security team (does this meet our policies?). Both tracks needed to be addressed on the same page without creating a cluttered, feature-listing experience.

CHALLENGE 03
⚙️
Making No-Code Credible

"No-code" has been devalued by over-promising tools that hit limitations quickly. Northwind needed to demonstrate that its no-code was genuinely enterprise-capable — through product UI screenshots and workflow complexity, not copy claims.

CHALLENGE 04
🔗
Integration Visualisation

200+ integrations is a powerful differentiator, but a logo wall of 200 tool icons is visually overwhelming and strategically unfocused. The design needed to communicate breadth through a curated, hierarchical visual treatment.

04 — Secondary Research

Market Insights

FINDING 01
68%
Silent Automation Failures

68% of enterprise operations teams report discovering workflow failures reactively — either from customers or downstream system errors — rather than proactively through monitoring. The ability to surface failures before they cascade was the primary design mandate. (Source: Gartner Process Automation Survey 2024)

FINDING 02
3.4x
No-Code + IT Governance Adoption

Enterprises that deploy workflow tools with both no-code builder interfaces AND enterprise governance controls see 3.4x higher adoption rates than tools that prioritise only one dimension. (Source: Forrester Process Automation Wave 2024)

FINDING 03
82%
Integration Depth as Evaluation Criteria

82% of enterprise operations platform buyers list native integration breadth as a top-3 evaluation criteria — above UI quality and pricing. Integration depth is a qualification gate, not a differentiator. (Source: G2 Workflow Automation Report 2024)

07 — User Flow

The Enterprise Journey

STEP 01
Workflow Canvas Hero
The hero surface is a live-rendered workflow canvas — nodes, connections, status indicators — communicating the product's power without requiring any explanation.
STEP 02
The Problem
A stark articulation of the silent failure problem — workflow automation that fails without warning, discovered by customers rather than teams. Immediate resonance for every ops leader.
STEP 03
Product Pillars
Three capabilities (Build, Monitor, Govern) each demonstrated with actual product UI — showing the no-code builder, the real-time dashboard, and the audit trail in context.
STEP 04
Integration Ecosystem
A curated integration showcase — not all 200, but the 30 that matter most to enterprise operations teams, organised by category (ERP, CRM, HR, Finance).
STEP 05
Enterprise Trust Stack
SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, SAML SSO, and data residency controls — presented as a capabilities matrix, not a badge wall. Security as architecture, not decoration.

08 — Toolkits

Tools & Workflow

Tools and methods used throughout the Northwind design process — from enterprise buyer research through to governance architecture and precision frontend execution.

🎨FigmaUI Design
📐Onest & Instrument SerifTypography
🔧Claude CodeFrontend Build
🔒SOC 2 / ISO 27001 DocumentationTrust Architecture Reference
🗺️FigJamIA & Information Architecture

09 — Process

From enterprise brief
to governed workflow.

Enterprise SaaS landing pages have a specific structural problem: they're evaluated by two people who want completely different things from the same page. The Ops Manager wants to know the product can solve her workflow problem. The IT Director wants to know it won't become his security problem. Designing for both without creating a cluttered, feature-listing mess took more iterations than I'd like to admit. What follows is the process that eventually got there.

01
Enterprise Buyer Research
Reviewed 15 enterprise SaaS evaluation frameworks (Gartner, Forrester, G2) to map the dual-track evaluation process (business user + IT). Built the page hierarchy around both tracks.
02
Competitive Deconstruction
Analysed Workato, Make, and Zapier landing pages. Identified governance as the visual gap — no competitor showed RBAC and audit trail above the fold.
03
Workflow Canvas Design
Built the hero product UI as an actual working canvas simulation — nodes, connections, and status indicators rendered in CSS, not screenshots. Communicates product sophistication through execution, not description.
04
Integration Architecture
Designed the integration showcase as a categorised matrix rather than a logo wall — showing how integrations connect across the enterprise stack, not just that they exist.
05
Typography System
Onest for all UI and body copy (clean, confident, enterprise-calibre), Instrument Serif italic for display moments (editorial gravitas in a corporate context).
06
Governance, Accessibility & Stakeholder Sign-off
Turned the security and compliance section into a product capability matrix — RBAC, audit trail, and data residency shown as configurable features, not badge decoration. The cobalt blue system was validated against WCAG AA standards; the primary cobalt on white passes at 4.8:1 contrast ratio. Stakeholder presentations to the client's IT lead and product director shaped the final hierarchy — the IT Director's feedback directly moved compliance signals from below the fold to the third scroll position. Cross-functional input made the page stronger, not compromised.
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