What is PartnerStack?

PartnerStack is a B2B SaaS platform that helps companies build, manage, and grow partner programs.

My work spanned product UX, user research, interaction design, design systems, email experiences, and design collaboration with a focus on improving complex workflows used by PartnerStack's vendors and partners.

My Role

I owned design across the product development lifecycle for the Communications team. From understanding user problems and exploring solutions to prototyping, design handoff, and QA.

I collaborated with Product and Engineering on:

Roadmap and sprint planning
User research and usability testing
UX flows and interaction design
Wireframing and prototyping
Design system development
Design collaboration and critique
Developer handoff and implementation QA

Case Study 01:

Partner Details

Making partner performance easier to understand

Partner Managers rely on PartnerStack to understand how their partners are performing and identify opportunities to improve their programs. The existing Partner Details experience made it difficult to quickly understand partner activity and performance.

The Problem

“As a Partner Channel Manager, I want to assess and review my partners' performance and activity through this data.”

This work was part of a larger initiative focused on improving the Partner Manager experience.

I worked closely with Customer Success Managers and customers to understand where the existing experience was creating friction, identify common use cases, and prioritize improvements.

Researching the problem

“How Might We” research exercise

From research to solution

I mapped the key user flows and use cases, documented insights from customer conversations, and identified a series of quick wins that could immediately improve the experience.

From there, I worked iteratively with my Product Manager to explore solutions within our existing technical and design-system constraints.

Introducing the Drawer

During the design process, we identified a recurring need: users wanted to access additional information or actions without leaving the page they were currently viewing.

This led to the creation of a drawer interaction pattern that can be seen bwlow. It’s a contextual panel that will slide into view while keeping the user anchored to the underlying page.

Rather than treating it as a one-off solution, I worked with the team to turn the drawer into a reusable component within PartnerStack's design system.The component was then used across multiple areas of the product.

Outcome

The redesigned Partner Details experience shipped to production, while the drawer pattern evolved beyond the original feature into a reusable part of PartnerStack's design system.

Impact

Improved the Partner Details experience based on customer research
Introduced a reusable drawer component to the design system
Created a pattern subsequently used across multiple areas of the product
Took the feature from research and ideation through implementation and QA

Old Partner Detail View

Mockups for the new view & feature

New Partner Detail view implemented

Case Study 02:

Email Modernization

Bringing the product experience beyond the app

PartnerStack's product experience doesn’t end when users left the application. Transactional and product-triggered emails were an important part of how partners and vendors interacted with the platform.

The existing emails were largely text and links, lacked visual consistency with the product, and proved to be difficult for users to recognize as legitimate PartnerStack communications.

At the same time, PartnerStack was migrating its email infrastructure from SendWithUs to SendGrid, creating an opportunity to rethink the entire email experience.

The challenge

The goal was to create a cohesive email system that:

Reflected the PartnerStack brand
Connected the email experience to the web application's UI
Made emails easier to recognize and trust
Could support different types of transactional communications
Could be efficiently maintained and expanded over tim

Taking ownership

This project was unique because our scrum team was operating without a Product Manager.

I took ownership of defining the design scope and worked directly with Customer Success to understand customer pain points. I also audited our existing email library, reviewed content and structure, researched email patterns from other products, and worked with Engineering to understand technical constraints.

Building an email design system

Rather than redesigning every email individually, I created a modular email component system in Figma.

I built reusable content blocks and variants for common email patterns, including:

Headers and footers
Content sections
Signatures
Buttons and links
Optional content blocks
Consistent spacing and typography

This allowed designers and the Communications team to assemble new emails using a consistent visual system instead of starting from scratch each time.

Template system in figma

Before -> After

Designing for the real world

Email design came with significantly more technical constraints than designing for the web application.

Every design needed to be tested across:

Mobile · Desktop · Tablet · Gmail · Outlook · Yahoo · Light Mode · Dark Mode

I worked closely with Engineering throughout implementation and QA to resolve issues around formatting, CSS support, fonts, imagery, and platform-specific rendering

Outcome

The redesigned email system was rolled out across PartnerStack's existing product communications, bringing the external email experience into alignment with the product's visual language and interaction patterns.

The component system also created a scalable foundation for future email design and made designer-to-developer handoff more efficient.

Impact

Redesigned PartnerStack's existing transactional/product email experiences
Established a reusable Figma component system for future emails
Created a more cohesive experience between the product and external communications
Improved consistency across different email types and communication surfaces

Design Systems & Collaboration

Design system

Beyond individual features, I contributed to PartnerStack's broader design practice.

I worked on evolving PartnerStack's component and icon systems, including migrating the existing icon library toward FontAwesome and mapping existing product icons to the new library.

I contributed reusable components and patterns—including the drawer component that originated from the Partner Details project.

Design Sprinting

I facilitated design sprint exercises to explore improvements to widely used product components.

Working collaboratively in Miro/FigJam, I helped the team move from understanding user needs and constraints through ideation and prioritization toward actionable design solutions.

What I Took Away

PartnerStack gave me the opportunity to operate as an embedded product designer rather than simply a designer executing tickets.

As the sole designer on my scrum team, I was involved in the full product lifecycle. From understanding customer problems and shaping solutions to collaborating with Engineering and validating the final implementation.

It strengthened my ability to:

✶ Own design end-to-end

✶ Collaborate cross-functionally

✶ Design within technical constraints

✶ Build scalable systems

✶ Use research to inform product decisions

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