Confidential
2023
Reframing a technical migration as a trust crisis
Highlights
Expanding stakeholder perspective through comprehensive research
What started as a platform migration revealed something deeper through discovery: broken systems had eroded user trust so completely that staff abandoned digital tools entirely—creating duplicate work, data integrity issues, and direct revenue loss.
Retrospective
Earning trust to uncover truth
After cycling through over 10 different developers, stakeholders needed to see a different approach in action.
Through contextual interviews across six departments, I discovered that underneath the migration work was a bigger issue: usability failures had eroded trust. Staff had abandoned digital tools for paper backups. Customers called rather than ordering online, triggering a lengthy manual process. Even our team struggled to log in.
This wasn't just a technology problem—it was a trust problem. While the migration remained the focus, my research helped stakeholders understand that fixing how the system worked for users was equally important. By the end of 4 weeks, a team skeptical of "the extra expense" of UX was fully invested.
