Case Study

Smart Checklist: Leading Multi-Phase UX Redesign from Insight to Impact

  • Role: UX Manager / UX Lead
  • Company: Yum! Brands
  • Team: Cross-functional team of PMs, engineers, ops stakeholders, 2 product designers, 2 Design System designers
  • Duration: 6 months
  • Scope: UX leadership across research, strategy, stakeholder alignment, phased redesign, and rollout

Some details and visuals have been redacted or adapted to protect proprietary information. The case study emphasizes leadership approach and outcomes over exact designs.

1. Problem Statement

We consistently received feedback from frontline users through our internal feedback tool and user interviews, highlighting that the Checklist was difficult to understand and use. Users struggled with unclear task states, a cluttered interface, and overall lack of confidence in completing steps correctly. These recurring signals made it clear that a strategic UX redesign was necessary to improve usability, drive adoption, and enhance data reliability.

User Group: Shift leaders in Yum! Brands restaurants

Channel of Insight: Ongoing feedback from users via internal feedback tool

User Pain Points:

  1. Difficulty understanding what tasks to complete and when
  2. Cluttered interface with poor information hierarchy
  3. Confusing or missing task states, leading to uncertainty and errors

Business Impact:

  1. Slower task execution during shifts
  2. Increased number of operational mistakes
  3. Inconsistent task compliance affecting food quality and service speed

Strategic Goal: Redesign the Checklist to support restaurant teams in delivering faster, more reliable operations, ultimately driving higher customer satisfaction and sales.

2. My Role

As the UX Lead, I championed the transformation of this product from an operational checklist into an intuitive, scalable workflow platform.

  • Defined the problem and opportunity by synthesizing user feedback, behavioral data, and input from market and brand leaders

  • Crafted a UX strategy rooted in business goals: clarity, simplicity, and user confidence

  • Guided the UX team through discovery, prototyping, validation, and rollout, while mentoring and supporting team members throughout

  • Partnered cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Ops, and Brands to align on goals, define success metrics, and shape rollout plans

  • Drove stakeholder alignment at every stage to ensure shared ownership and clarity across teams

  • Initiated and led the creation of a Design System Team: resulting in scalable UI components, documentation, and stronger collaboration with Engineering

  • Championed the user voice while translating insights into outcomes that served both user needs and business objectives

3. The Process: A Multi-Stage UX Strategy

To ensure cross-functional alignment and phased impact, I structured our work into three intentional stages: each backed by stakeholder buy-in and user insights:

🔹 Stage 1: Business Alignment + User Validation

  • Partnered with stakeholders to scope UX improvements that aligned with immediate business goals

  • Conducted usability testing with restaurant managers to validate direction

  • Focused on simplifying flows and launching low-friction improvements

  • Once validated, we launched Stage 1 and began tracking qualitative and behavioral data

  • Product team concurrently explored market landscape and competitors to assess growth potential

🔹 Stage 2: Strategic Expansion + UI Evolution

  • With stronger confidence and usage data, we scoped Stage 2 as an opportunity to build something valuable and delightful

  • Conducted a second round of user interviews, diving into how users engaged with the tool, what they lacked, and what they’d want in a richer experience

  • Collaborated deeply with brands and market leaders to shape scalable functionality and feature ideas

  • I identified a key opportunity to improve accessibility and overall experience and proposed a new modern UI

  • Formed a Design System Team within our squad to create:

    • Modular, accessible components

    • Clear rules and documentation

    • Alignment workflows with Engineering

  • Result: The new UI not only improved usability: it was adopted by Design and Dev as a shared component library across other internal tools

🔹 Stage 3: Intelligence Layer (In Progress)

  • We’re now building a smart, adaptive experience layer to enhance personalization and reduce user effort

  • UX focus is on proactivity, guidance, and intelligent defaults

  • Strategy continues to be shaped through data, feedback, and competitive insight

⚠️ Note: Specific features remain confidential. 

4. Results and outcomes

This wasn’t just a redesign,  it was a cross-functional shift toward a more user-centered, scalable internal product ecosystem:

✅ Key Improvements (YoY):

  • Overall satisfaction increased from 59% → 72%

  • Ease of navigation rose from 60% → 70%

  • Confidence in task completion grew from 63% → 71%

We can track the business impact of the checklist enhancement by correlating time-on-task data and usage analytics with operational performance indicators. Specifically, a decrease in the average time spent per checklist signals improved efficiency, every minute saved per employee compounds into significant labor savings across stores and teams. Tracking completion rates, task duration, and error frequency through system analytics will quantify productivity gains.  

By combining these measures, we can calculate operational cost savings (e.g., reduced hours spent on routine tasks), assess efficiency improvements (tasks completed per hour), and estimate ROI based on the reduction in time and effort required.

“It’s so much easier to use!“
— User’s message in company chat

Bar chart titled 'Distribution in answer results' displaying user sentiment across four survey questions related to the HutBot experience. Each question shows response percentages across five satisfaction levels, from 'Highly Dissatisfied' to 'Highly Satisfied'. Highlights include: 59% of users are highly satisfied overall, 60% find navigation easy, 63% feel confident completing tasks, and 58% believe the features are relevant to their needs.

5. Next Steps & Ongoing Challenges

✅ Next Steps

-> Accelerate Stage 3 development by designing intelligent, adaptive experiences that reduce user effort and enhance relevance

-> Strengthen and scale the design system through improved documentation, component evolution, and deeper integration across teams

-> Deepen user insight through focused research to uncover shifting needs and validate high-impact opportunities

-> Foster cross-functional alignment with Product, Engineering, Ops, and Brand teams to ensure cohesive, scalable, and user-centered growth