Case Study · Gainsight · 2020

Cockpit — Redesigning task
management for 20,000 users.

A five-month redesign of Gainsight's most-used product. Cut friction, reduce support tickets, and build something Customer Success teams actually love.

Role·Lead Product Designer
Company·Gainsight
Duration·5 months · Mar – Jul 2020
Cockpit UI
20K
Weekly active users across 550 customers
−40%
Reduction in task completion time
−30%
Reduction in support tickets
8/10
NPS score for new experience
01
Problem
Understanding the product and what was broken
The Product

The home base for
Customer Success teams.

Cockpit is where Customer Success Managers manage everything that matters — renewals, churn signals, upsell opportunities, low survey scores. The product was five years old, built with minimal designer involvement, with features accumulated over time. Users were frustrated. The data confirmed it.

"Cockpit doesn't have enough best practices in place to help you discern end results without testing and troubleshooting with your team."

— Anonymous User, G2 Review
Existing Product

Five years old.
Built without design.

Features bolted on over time, no coherent system, too many clicks for basic tasks.

Old Cockpit UI

The existing Cockpit UI — cluttered, dense, requiring too many clicks for basic tasks

02
Research
Who uses it, how they use it, and what's failing them
Who Uses It
CSM
Customer Success Manager
80% of users
Works on tasks daily. Creates, assigns, sends emails from tasks. Feeling the most friction.
Manager
CSM Manager
Monitors progress, manages workload, ensures quality across the team.
Other
Other Roles
Renewal managers, implementation teams, sales reps, support, professional services.
Usage Analysis

Before user interviews, quantitative analysis revealed where time was being lost and which workflows were most broken.

User navigation trails
Most navigated areas
Product usage metrics
Pain Point Mapping

User interviews and workshops surfaced three core themes — Cluttered, Unintuitive, and common usability failures. Each mapped to pain points, then matched with a design proposal.

Cluttered
Unintuitive
Summary
Competitive Analysis

We studied Asana, Monday.com, Airtable, and Smartsheet — borrowing proven patterns without copying their approach.

Asana
Quick task creation, editable fields in list view, customisable detail view.
Monday.com
Easy editing, multiple view support, strong collaboration, plug-and-play components.
Airtable
In-app tabs, customisable UI, multiple views, better task management flexibility.
Smartsheet
Spreadsheet-style management, heavily customisable — but technical for non-expert users.
03
Design
From concepts to decisions that shipped
Conceptualisation

Three core concepts were validated with users before engineering review.

Custom Task Views
Field Edit on List View
Sub-tasks
The Solution
01
Minimum and meaningful tasks on landing
Reduces clutterFaster load

Only assigned tasks due this week. 25 tasks load at a time, reducing cognitive load and improving performance.

Solution 01
02
Inline editing — change status in the list
Saves timeFewer clicks

Update attributes directly in the list — no separate panel needed. Borrowed from Asana and Monday.com.

↓ 40% task completion time
Solution 02
03
Task detail — information, not a form
Reduces cognitive loadA/B tested

Details presented as clean information, not input fields. Switches to edit mode only when needed. A/B tested with real users.

Solution 03
04
Custom Task Views — focused work
ProductivityPersonalisation

Create personalised views — separating regular from urgent or critical tasks. Less noise. More focus.

Solution 04
Seeing Results
Outcomes after launch
−30%
Support tickets
−40%
Task completion time
−25%
Clicks in workflows
8/10
NPS for new experience
User feedback
What I Learned
Quantitative analysis reveals the shape of a problem before users can articulate it
When redesigning a familiar product — know which habits to change and which to respect
Beta releases generate the most honest feedback — ship early, iterate fast
Managing 30+ stakeholders requires a communication framework, not just great design
A/B testing in production is the only true validation for a daily-use product
The best UX decisions combine empathy from interviews with evidence from usage data
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