Internship
B2B
Product Design
Product Strategy
Tenon
Empowering marketers with insights that drive confidence.
Roles
UX Designer
UX Researcher
UI Designer
Product Strategist
Timeline
3 months (May 2025 - August 2025)
Team
5+ Developers
2 Product Managers
2 Marketers
Product Design Lead
Skills
Cross-functional Collaboration
Stakeholder Communication
Developer Handoff
Design Systems
In Summer 2025, I joined Tenon, a B2B marketing automation software company, as a Product Design Intern. Tasked with redesigning the homepage—the first touchpoint for over 10,000 marketers on the platform—I created a foundation that set the tone for their entire workflow.
Impact & Achievements
My successes at a glance…
6 Weeks
instead of 10 weeks: Exceeded deadline expectations and used the remaining time to work on other projects.
3 Client Deals
were secured through the introduction of this feature, with even more currently pending.
All Users
in final testing sessions reported that the redesigned homepage gave them a clearer sense of their marketing journey compared to the previous solution.
Sole Designer
Stepped into a full-time design role: Following org restructuring where I became the only designer in the company, I adapted instantly and took ownership of critical projects, built new feedback loops, and partnered with senior teammates to keep design momentum strong.
Constraints
Here's what I was working with:
Limited User Research: Due to time/funding limits, I only had a few interviewees with no large-scale surveys. Most users were internal stakeholders, which may have produced biased feedback.
Team Changes Midway: Midway org restructuring left me as the only designer and also impacted a PM, marketer, and several engineers I worked with.
Technical Constraints: Tenon is built on ServiceNow, so oftentimes I had to work within restrictive UI Builder layouts and component libraries, with little room for customization.
The Problem
Scoping out the problem space
Initial discovery
Understanding the context of our product
When I began designing the homepage, I first took a step back to really understand the broader context of where this page fits into our product. I met with product managers and internal marketers and learned about some upcoming priorities and product vision. Here was our general consensus: The existing homepage was unhelpful for marketers because it severely lacked features. It only showed email send activity, information that could already be accessed from other pages.
From a business perspective, it wasn’t driving retention or feature adoption.
From a user perspective, it didn’t aid the marketer’s journey or help them get work done.
This presented a major opportunity to streamline marketers’ workflows and deliver real value. We saw the homepage as a place to tell a cohesive story of the marketer’s workflow—a way to tie the rest of the app together in a clear, linear path.
Our current homepage... doesn't tell the user much.
Initial discovery
Rapid Exploration
From there, I moved into a goal-setting phase, asking myself tons of questions like: What should the homepage actually do for our users? What questions should it answer? Stakeholders and management expect the homepage to drive retention and help marketers make faster, more confident decisions. Users expect it to surface immediate actions while clarifying performance and next steps, without overwhelming them.
Since the homepage is often the first thing someone sees, it also needs to guide users toward what matters most—whether that’s launching a campaign, checking performance, or identifying next steps. My focus in this phase was defining not just what to build, but why it mattered.
Brainstorming 🤓
Problem Definition
How can our homepage design empower marketers with insight and direction—while fitting seamlessly into the rest of our product?
How can our homepage design empower marketers with insight and direction—while fitting seamlessly into the rest of our product?
I wanted to distill everything into a clear, guiding problem statement along with three more specific questions to guide my designs. How might we…
…help marketers quickly navigate to the task at hand so they can complete it efficiently without getting lost in the interface?
…display metrics so that marketers feel assured their work is effective and valuable?
…present tasks and tactics so that marketers understand how their individual projects contribute towards their bigger picture goal?
The Research
Understanding marketers and their needs
To learn more about specific problems marketers are trying to solve with a homepage, what’s working and not working in current tools, and how they actually approach their workflow, I conducted 3 in-depth interviews with experienced marketers.
Jess, Hannah, and Colleen.
"I'm often worried about the overall health of my campaigns and projects. Is there anything broken that needs immediate attention?"
- Hannah
"When I’m on a homepage, I have a one track mind to complete a specific task, like sending an email. I want to navigate there quickly and smoothly."
- Colleen
Research Synthesis
I synthesized interview insights through affinity mapping to identify recurring themes and prioritize what mattered most. From there, I prioritized MVP features—balancing user needs with product constraints and finding alternatives for out-of-scope requests like ROI tracking, campaigns, and dashboards.
Sorting through the notes, quotes, observations, and research data by creating an affinity map.
Sorting through the notes, quotes, observations, and research data by creating an affinity map.
Summary
Key insights emerged; Users want:
Big picture clarity
Emphasized the need for a homepage that orients marketers and tells them where they are, what’s working, what to do next.
Diagnostic insights
Users didn't want just raw metrics. They were frustrated with dashboards that didn’t tie performance to goals or outcomes.
Immediate action
Fluid, task-driven workflows. A good homepage, should not only surface insights but help them take immediate action like jumping into a campaign or spotting a missed opportunity. It should act as a pulse check; not a deep dive, but enough to guide decisions and trigger next steps.
The Design
Putting ideas down onto paper
I began translating all of the research and goal setting into something more tangible. Using my interviews and "how might we" statements as a guide, I started sketching many different homepage layouts.
A big part of this phase was testing out structure and hierarchy: what should users see first? What CTA or metric summary would give them confidence to take action?
These early sketches really helped me think through the logic of the page before visuals came into play. They also helped me throw away ideas that weren’t adding value and refine the ones that worked.
Crazy 8 rapid sketching and prototyping.
Initial low-fidelity wireframing and exploration.
User Testing
Feedback & Iteration
Design at Tenon was highly collaborative. We ran regular design reviews with the full staff, sharing context, walking through solutions, and gathering diverse perspectives. On alternating weeks, we held engineering reviews to discuss technical feasibility, architecture, and performance considerations.
I also conducted follow-up interviews with marketers, reconnecting with early research participants to validate design decisions and uncover blind spots. I gathered feedback on current design iterations and follow-up/clarification questions.
These consistent feedback cycles—across staff, engineers, and end users—ensured the homepage evolved through continuous iteration and aligned with both business goals and real marketing workflows.
I originally envisioned a straightforward process from discovery to handoff, but in a fast-paced startup, shifting priorities and technical constraints required constant adjustment.
The design process I had envisioned.
Midway through, my process evolved into a more cyclical model, where I worked closely with developers, revisited user needs, and iterated quickly to keep momentum. This flexibility was key to delivering a homepage design that was both feasible to build and meaningful for marketers.
The design process in actuality.
Developer Handoff
To make developer handoff as seamless as possible, I meticulously annotated my Figma files using Figma Annotations to eliminate ambiguity and created reusable components that aligned with Tenon’s design system for scalability. I also coordinated closely with developers several times a week through engineering reviews and check-ins, where we discussed feasibility, clarified edge cases, and addressed feedback.
This consistent communication and attention to detail ensured there was no gray area between design and implementation, reducing friction and helping the team move faster with confidence.
Annotations on a component.
Internship
B2B
Product Design
Product Strategy
Tenon
Empowering marketers with insights that drive confidence.
Roles
UX Designer
UX Researcher
UI Designer
Product Strategist
Timeline
3 months (May 2025 - August 2025)
Team
5+ Developers
2 Product Managers
2 Marketers
Product Design Lead
Skills
Cross-functional Collaboration
Stakeholder Communication
Developer Handoff
Design Systems
In Summer 2025, I joined Tenon, a B2B marketing automation software company, as a Product Design Intern. Tasked with redesigning the homepage—the first touchpoint for over 10,000 marketers on the platform—I created a foundation that set the tone for their entire workflow.
Impact & Achievements
My successes at a glance…
6 Weeks
instead of 10 weeks: Exceeded deadline expectations and used the remaining time to work on other projects.
3 Client Deals
were secured through the introduction of this feature, with even more currently pending.
All Users
in final testing sessions reported that the redesigned homepage gave them a clearer sense of their marketing journey compared to the previous solution.
Sole Designer
Stepped into a full-time design role: Following org restructuring where I became the only designer in the company, I adapted instantly and took ownership of critical projects, built new feedback loops, and partnered with senior teammates to keep design momentum strong.
Constraints
Here's what I was working with:
Limited User Research: Due to time/funding limits, I only had a few interviewees with no large-scale surveys. Most users were internal stakeholders, which may have produced biased feedback.
Team Changes Midway: Midway org restructuring left me as the only designer and also impacted a PM, marketer, and several engineers I worked with.
Technical Constraints: Tenon is built on ServiceNow, so oftentimes I had to work within restrictive UI Builder layouts and component libraries, with little room for customization.
The Problem
Scoping out the problem space
Initial discovery
Understanding the context of our product
When I began designing the homepage, I first took a step back to really understand the broader context of where this page fits into our product. I met with product managers and internal marketers and learned about some upcoming priorities and product vision. Here was our general consensus: The existing homepage was unhelpful for marketers because it severely lacked features. It only showed email send activity, information that could already be accessed from other pages.
From a business perspective, it wasn’t driving retention or feature adoption.
From a user perspective, it didn’t aid the marketer’s journey or help them get work done.
This presented a major opportunity to streamline marketers’ workflows and deliver real value. We saw the homepage as a place to tell a cohesive story of the marketer’s workflow—a way to tie the rest of the app together in a clear, linear path.
Our current homepage... doesn't tell the user much.
Initial discovery
Rapid Exploration
From there, I moved into a goal-setting phase, asking myself tons of questions like: What should the homepage actually do for our users? What questions should it answer? Stakeholders and management expect the homepage to drive retention and help marketers make faster, more confident decisions. Users expect it to surface immediate actions while clarifying performance and next steps, without overwhelming them.
Since the homepage is often the first thing someone sees, it also needs to guide users toward what matters most—whether that’s launching a campaign, checking performance, or identifying next steps. My focus in this phase was defining not just what to build, but why it mattered.
Brainstorming 🤓
Problem Definition
How can our homepage design empower marketers with insight and direction—while fitting seamlessly into the rest of our product?
I wanted to distill everything into a clear, guiding problem statement along with three more specific questions to guide my designs. How might we…
…help marketers quickly navigate to the task at hand so they can complete it efficiently without getting lost in the interface?
…display metrics so that marketers feel assured their work is effective and valuable?
…present tasks and tactics so that marketers understand how their individual projects contribute towards their bigger picture goal?
The Research
Understanding marketers and their needs
To learn more about specific problems marketers are trying to solve with a homepage, what’s working and not working in current tools, and how they actually approach their workflow, I conducted 3 in-depth interviews with experienced marketers.
Jess, Hannah, and Colleen.
"I'm often worried about the overall health of my campaigns and projects. Is there anything broken that needs immediate attention?"
- Hannah
"When I’m on a homepage, I have a one track mind to complete a specific task, like sending an email. I want to navigate there quickly and smoothly."
- Colleen
Research Synthesis
I synthesized interview insights through affinity mapping to identify recurring themes and prioritize what mattered most. From there, I prioritized MVP features—balancing user needs with product constraints and finding alternatives for out-of-scope requests like ROI tracking, campaigns, and dashboards.
Sorting through the notes, quotes, observations, and research data by creating an affinity map.
Summary
Key insights emerged; Users want:
Big picture clarity
Emphasized the need for a homepage that orients marketers and tells them where they are, what’s working, what to do next.
Diagnostic insights
Users didn't want just raw metrics. They were frustrated with dashboards that didn’t tie performance to goals or outcomes.
Immediate action
Fluid, task-driven workflows. A good homepage, should not only surface insights but help them take immediate action like jumping into a campaign or spotting a missed opportunity. It should act as a pulse check; not a deep dive, but enough to guide decisions and trigger next steps.
The Design
Putting ideas down onto paper
I began translating all of the research and goal setting into something more tangible. Using my interviews and "how might we" statements as a guide, I started sketching many different homepage layouts.
A big part of this phase was testing out structure and hierarchy: what should users see first? What CTA or metric summary would give them confidence to take action?
These early sketches really helped me think through the logic of the page before visuals came into play. They also helped me throw away ideas that weren’t adding value and refine the ones that worked.
Crazy 8 rapid sketching and prototyping.
Initial low-fidelity wireframing and exploration.
User Testing
Feedback & Iteration
Design at Tenon was highly collaborative. We ran regular design reviews with the full staff, sharing context, walking through solutions, and gathering diverse perspectives. On alternating weeks, we held engineering reviews to discuss technical feasibility, architecture, and performance considerations.
I also conducted follow-up interviews with marketers, reconnecting with early research participants to validate design decisions and uncover blind spots. I gathered feedback on current design iterations and follow-up/clarification questions.
These consistent feedback cycles—across staff, engineers, and end users—ensured the homepage evolved through continuous iteration and aligned with both business goals and real marketing workflows.
I originally envisioned a straightforward process from discovery to handoff, but in a fast-paced startup, shifting priorities and technical constraints required constant adjustment.
The design process I had envisioned.
Midway through, my process evolved into a more cyclical model, where I worked closely with developers, revisited user needs, and iterated quickly to keep momentum. This flexibility was key to delivering a homepage design that was both feasible to build and meaningful for marketers.
The design process in actuality.
Developer Handoff
To make developer handoff as seamless as possible, I meticulously annotated my Figma files using Figma Annotations to eliminate ambiguity and created reusable components that aligned with Tenon’s design system for scalability. I also coordinated closely with developers several times a week through engineering reviews and check-ins, where we discussed feasibility, clarified edge cases, and addressed feedback.
This consistent communication and attention to detail ensured there was no gray area between design and implementation, reducing friction and helping the team move faster with confidence.
Annotations on a component.
The Solution
The final homepage design brought together key features that directly addressed the needs surfaced in research—helping marketers act quickly, stay oriented, and maintain workflow continuity.
Get Started CTA Buttons
Direct entry points into high-priority tasks, addressing marketers’ need to take immediate action without searching through the interface.
Recent Performance Section
Provides a snapshot of key metrics, meeting the need for quick, diagnostic insights that give marketers clarity and confidence in their progress.
Recently Visited
Surfaces pages marketers return to often, reducing friction and supporting the continuous, task-driven workflows they emphasized in interviews.
Drafts
Keeps in-progress work visible and accessible, ensuring marketers can easily pick up where they left off and maintain momentum in their campaigns.
Get Started CTA Buttons
Direct entry points into high-priority tasks, addressing marketers’ need to take immediate action without searching through the interface.
Get Started CTA Buttons
Direct entry points into high-priority tasks, addressing marketers’ need to take immediate action without searching through the interface.
The Solution
The final homepage design brought together key features that directly addressed the needs surfaced in research—helping marketers act quickly, stay oriented, and maintain workflow continuity.
Get Started CTA Buttons
Direct entry points into high-priority tasks, addressing marketers’ need to take immediate action without searching through the interface.
Recent Performance Section
Provides a snapshot of key metrics, meeting the need for quick, diagnostic insights that give marketers clarity and confidence in their progress.
Recently Visited
Surfaces pages marketers return to often, reducing friction and supporting the continuous, task-driven workflows they emphasized in interviews.
Drafts
Keeps in-progress work visible and accessible, ensuring marketers can easily pick up where they left off and maintain momentum in their campaigns.
Get Started CTA Buttons
Direct entry points into high-priority tasks, addressing marketers’ need to take immediate action without searching through the interface.
Reflection and future explorations
Working at Tenon was an amazing experience. It taught me incredible lessons that I couldn't have learned from personal projects alone, about adaptability, collaboration, and designing within real-world constraints. Although there were definitely its ups and downs, I was learning every single day and this experience reshaped how I think about design in a corporate environment.
Lessons Learned
Research under constraints
Timelines, budget cuts, and shifting priorities often mean research is the first thing to go.
I learned to design thoroughly with limited inputs by scraping past studies, competitor analysis, and secondary sources.
Context > pixels
Design is 90% understanding context, 10% pushing pixels.
Business goals and project scope can change mid-process; don’t be discouraged when this happens.
Adapting to change
When my manager (the only other designer) left, I became the sole designer on critical projects.
By creating new feedback loops and seeking guidance from remaining senior teammates across product, marketing, and engineering, I stepped into a full-time design role and kept projects moving forward.
The reality of corporate design
You won't design “experiences”, you design compromises. Scope cuts and shifting strategies will reshape your work.
You’re not really the user’s voice, you’re the translator between user needs and business survival.
The design process is never a neat double diamond; it’s closer to a spaghetti knot where research is skipped, testing deferred, and designs shipped unfinished.
Future Explorations
Next up on the roadmap…
AI features: I proposed three AI opportunities (predictive agents, performance analysis, and campaign creation), validated through research and now adopted into the product roadmap.
Campaign Integration: Bringing campaigns into the homepage (a frequent request in research) so marketers can manage big-picture strategy alongside day-to-day tasks.
Customizable Layouts: Allowing marketers to rearrange, hide, or prioritize homepage modules to fit their unique workflows.
Collapsible & Adaptive Sections: Creating flexible sections that expand or collapse based on user preference or usage frequency, reducing clutter.
Thank you for reading!
Reflection and future explorations
Working at Tenon was an amazing experience. It taught me incredible lessons that I couldn't have learned from personal projects alone, about adaptability, collaboration, and designing within real-world constraints. Although there were definitely its ups and downs, I was learning every single day and this experience reshaped how I think about design in a corporate environment.
Lessons Learned
Research under constraints
Timelines, budget cuts, and shifting priorities often mean research is the first thing to go.
I learned to design thoroughly with limited inputs by scraping past studies, competitor analysis, and secondary sources.
Context > pixels
Design is 90% understanding context, 10% pushing pixels.
Business goals and project scope can change mid-process; don’t be discouraged when this happens.
Adapting to change
When my manager (the only other designer) left, I became the sole designer on critical projects.
By creating new feedback loops and seeking guidance from remaining senior teammates across product, marketing, and engineering, I stepped into a full-time design role and kept projects moving forward.
The reality of corporate design
You won't design “experiences”, you design compromises. Scope cuts and shifting strategies will reshape your work.
You’re not really the user’s voice, you’re the translator between user needs and business survival.
The design process is never a neat double diamond; it’s closer to a spaghetti knot where research is skipped, testing deferred, and designs shipped unfinished.
Future Explorations
Next up on the roadmap…
AI features: I proposed three AI opportunities (predictive agents, performance analysis, and campaign creation), validated through research and now adopted into the product roadmap.
Campaign Integration: Bringing campaigns into the homepage (a frequent request in research) so marketers can manage big-picture strategy alongside day-to-day tasks.
Customizable Layouts: Allowing marketers to rearrange, hide, or prioritize homepage modules to fit their unique workflows.
Collapsible & Adaptive Sections: Creating flexible sections that expand or collapse based on user preference or usage frequency, reducing clutter.
