Redesigning the Dashboard — Rebuilding the Foundation for Lookback’s Future
By year seven, Lookback’s product had evolved into something much more powerful than its original scope—a full-scale qualitative research platform used by thousands of research teams worldwide. But our dashboard hadn’t kept up. Originally designed to support a simpler set of workflows, it had become increasingly brittle as we expanded into AI-assisted research, participant recruitment, and global scaling.
This was no longer just a UX upgrade—it was a foundation rebuild.
Objective:
Redesign Lookback’s dashboard and platform structure to support:
A flexible, scalable UI foundation for future product growth.
Seamless integration of Eureka, our AI research assistant.
Our first in-platform monetization: instant global participant recruitment.
A smoother, more confident experience for both researchers and participants.
Strategic Focus Areas:
Platform-Level Support for AI (Eureka)
Eureka—our AI research partner—needed a home. Not a gimmick bolted on, but a deeply integrated layer across workflows: preparing studies, surfacing insights, and recommending actions. The dashboard redesign laid the groundwork for this, embedding Eureka across project planning, analysis, and stakeholder engagement.
PreCheck: Session Reliability Reinvented
We introduced an entirely new workflow for research participants to verify their setup before a session could take place: camera, mic, browser, bandwidth. This single innovation reduced session failure rates by over 90%. It saved customers time, ensured smoother sessions, and restored trust in remote research.
Recruit: Instant Participant Access
For the first time in Lookback history, researchers could recruit participants from our global panel—instantly, with no external tools. This feature dropped session failure rates to 0% and became our first direct in-product purchase flow, opening a new revenue stream and radically simplifying workflows.
Ground-Up Research to Design What Customers Dreamed Of
Before designing, we listened. We conducted UX and CX research to map out:
The most used and loved features.
The most frustrating pain points.
The unspoken hopes teams had for the product.
What emerged was a clear vision: a dashboard that didn't just display sessions, but empowered teams to prepare, collaborate, and extract real value.
Systems Design for Internal Velocity
We rebuilt the UI from the ground up: modular, scaleable, and componentized. The result? Over 50% of future product initiatives no longer require bespoke design. Designers can now work ahead. Engineers can build without blockers.
Outcomes:
Delivered on-time and under budget across all project phases.
Zero major friction with existing users, despite major workflow changes.
Led to Lookback’s highest-velocity quarters on record.
Internal NPS and satisfaction surged across product, design, engineering, and customer support.
This redesign wasn’t just about modernizing an interface. It was a strategic, surgical reset of the platform’s most essential surfaces—anchored in research, shaped by real-world constraints, and future-facing in its flexibility.
This project is extremely sensitive in-nature. So I can only show some of the shipped product. I’d love to show you more details privately. If you’re interested, reach out to me to talk more it.