Top Provider
TIMELINE
Feb 2025 - Feb 2026
ROLE
Lead Product
Designer
SERVICES
User Research
Design Systems
Responsive Design
Top Provider helps businesses find and connect with trusted vendors across HR, marketing, payroll, and logistics — using data-driven matching to deliver curated recommendations that save buyers time and reduce decision fatigue.
Problem
The form was the conversion point and it asked for everything before giving anything back
Every match starts here. This form isn't a step in the funnel; it is the funnel. When users abandoned it, the business didn't lose a submission, it lost the lead. The form demanded commitment up front — company details, workforce type, international operations — with no sense of how long it'd take and no payoff in sight. No progress. No reassurance. It interrogated when it should have guided.
Research
How can we reduce friction and increase completion?
A UX audit across devices revealed three core friction points: cognitive overload, unclear progress, and poor mobile usability — each shaping the direction of the redesign.
FINDINGS
HEURISTIC EVALUATION FINDINGS
Additional friction points in the form experience revealed by further evaluation
WHY THESE ISSUES MATTER
The form is the primary entry point for vendor matching, even minor friction has a significant impact on completion rates and lead generation.
Solution
Streamlining the Intake Form
Friction within the form flow was discouraging users from completing submissions. The overhauled design solution focused on introducing clearer progress indicators, a mobile-optimized layout, and contextual guidance to help users move through faster and with greater confidence.
Exploring Potential Solution Directions
Before moving into high-fidelity designs, I explored multiple approaches to restructuring the intake form. These early concepts ranged from a traditional multi-step experience to more dynamic and generative interfaces. The goal was to evaluate how different interaction patterns could reduce friction, improve clarity, and better guide users through the submission process.
V2 was conversational and personable. V3 was generative, rearranging itself dynamically. Both demoed better. Neither was right. I shipped V1, the streamlined multi-step structure, because a familiar pattern was the point. Guide users through a known shape confidently; don't make them learn a new one. Clarity beat cleverness.
Contextual helper text clarifies complex questions and supports user understanding.
Inline error messaging guides users to resolve incomplete or incorrect fields.
FINAL REDESIGN
Transforming the User Intake Experience
INTERACTION IMPROVEMENTS
Every fix answered one question: guide or interrogate?
Error Handling
Inline errors block incomplete fields and say exactly what's wrong, so users aren't left guessing how to fix a mistake.
Contextual Guidance
Tooltips sit beside unfamiliar questions, so users answer with confidence instead of guessing at what's being asked.
Progress Indicator
A lightweight progress indicator gives continuous feedback without rigid percentages that overpromise on a form whose length flexes by category.
Confirmation & System Feedback
Loading and confirmation states tell users their answers landed and what happens next, closing the loop the original left open.
OUTCOMES
Small Frictions, Compounding Consequences
The design direction was approved and handed off for development, with the final production implementation evolving from the designs shown here. The redesign directly addressed the primary issues identified during the heuristic evaluation: unclear progress, limited error guidance, cognitive overload, and inconsistent mobile visibility. Stakeholders described the proposed experience as significantly cleaner and more efficient, reinforcing the direction before handoff.
Because the intake form is Top Provider's primary conversion touchpoint, reducing this friction represented more than a usability improvement—it created an opportunity to improve how effectively users move from vendor discovery to submitting a request. The next step would be validating that impact in production through completion rate, step-level drop-off, mobile completion, and error recovery.
MAIN TAKEAWAYS
Designing for dynamic forms requires progress feedback that feels flexible rather than misleading.
Small interaction details, such as helper text and confirmation states, can aid in building user confidence.
Responsive form design is not just about resizing layouts, but preserving usability and visibility of key actions.
KPI EVALUATION
The redesign targeted the form's most critical friction points, validated through iterative usability testing:
FORM COMPLETION RATE
Reducing abandonment through clearer progress feedback and a more guided flow.
MOBILE COMPLETION RATE
Responsive improvements ensured CTA visibility and usability held across breakpoints.
WHAT I'D MEASURE NEXT
STEP-LEVEL DROP-OFF
Usability testing would pinpoint where users hesitated and continued to experience friction within the form.
ERROR RECOVERY RATE
Are inline validation and helper texts reducing the friction users hit when correcting mistakes?