Designing a mobile experience around small-business priorities
Mobile Product Design • UX Design • Product Strategy • Interaction Design • AI Product
Product C3
C3 helps teams manage customer communication and automation through configurable workflows. As workflows become more complex, AI can dramatically reduce the effort required to build and modify them.
Problem Too Much, Too Often
C3’s dashboard offered powerful capabilities, but smaller businesses rarely needed most of them. With simpler workflows and customer interactions happening mostly on their phones, the full dashboard added unnecessary friction.
Solution Made For The Everyday
We created a focused mobile experience around what small businesses actually need, making everyday tasks simpler without the complexity of the full C3 dashboard.
Result Wherever Business Happens
The mobile app brings C3 into the everyday workflow of small businesses, giving owners a simpler way to manage their business from the device they already use.
CONTEXT
Small businesses were using C3 in ways we hadn’t designed for.
As C3 expanded to smaller businesses, we saw that their needs were more focused and their working habits were different. Owners often manage the business on the go, making mobile a more natural place to access the tools they use every day.
PROBLEM
The dashboard wasn’t built for small businesses.
For smaller businesses, the full dashboard introduced more tools, settings, and complexity than their day-to-day work required. A salon owner or shop owner doesn’t need to navigate a powerful desktop experience just to handle the essentials.
They need C3 to fit naturally into a busy day, with the right capabilities available quickly and without the overhead of features they rarely use.
GOAL
Make C3 feel simpler for small businesses, without taking away the tools they need.
Reduce the noise: Put the most important information and actions first..
Make every action faster: Design around quick tasks so users can manage customer conversations with fewer steps.
Design for small-business reality: Move away from an enterprise-first structure and create an experience that reflects how smaller teams operate.
RESEARCH & KEY INSIGHTS
Identifying mobile friction and small-business needs through user interviews, usability testing, and a UX audit to reshape how C3 works on mobile.
Key Insight No1: Small businesses needed less, not more: The existing experience exposed a wide range of capabilities, but a lot users relied on a much smaller set of everyday tasks.
Key Insight No2: Customer conversations drove the experience: Responding to customers and managing active conversations mattered more than accessing the wider set of features.
Key Insight No3: Mobile needed its own priorities: Carrying the desktop experience onto a smaller screen added complexity, making important actions harder to find.
DESIGN 1/4
First-time experience
Get users from sign-in to what matters.
The onboarding flow keeps the setup focused, moving users from signing in and verifying their email to enabling notifications, choosing their workspace, and landing on a briefing built around what needs their attention.
DESIGN 2/4
Conversations
Put customer conversations at the centre.
The conversation experience makes it easier to find the right customer, understand the context, and respond quickly without navigating through unnecessary layers.
DESIGN 3/4
Quick interactions
Make everyday customer tasks easier.
Key actions are built around the moments small businesses handle most often, reducing unnecessary steps and keeping the experience focused on getting things done.
DESIGN 4/4
Customer context
Make customer information available without interrupting the conversation.
Customer context is surfaced directly within the conversation, giving users a quick view of who they are speaking with, along with relevant information and actions, without forcing them into a separate screen.
IMPACT
A focused mobile experience built around everyday work.
2.4×
Common conversation actions were completed faster through swipe gestures and contextual shortcuts.
31%
Everyday tasks required fewer taps and less navigation across the app.
4.6/5
Users rated the experience highly for clarity and ease of use.
REFLECTIONS
Mobile needs its own priorities.
A smaller screen is not just a different canvas. It requires its own hierarchy, interactions, and decisions about what deserves attention.
Simplification is about focus.
The goal was not to remove C3’s capabilities, but to keep complexity in the background while making everyday tasks easier to reach.
Context makes actions faster.
Putting customer information and actions closer to the conversation reduced the need to navigate away from the task at hand.