Go-to-Market UX • Design for Velocity • Risk Mitigation

Launching a Carbon Calculation SaaS Under Extreme Time Pressure

Designing and shipping an MVP in 8 weeks that reduced onboarding friction and secured the first pilot customer.

Context & Challenge

When I joined Atmoz, a carbon accounting startup, we faced a hard deadline: 8 weeks to launch a pilot for our first partner customer. The existing UI was vague and confusing, threatening to derail the launch and lose the trust of our partner.

The product helped SMBs calculate their emissions and identify reduction opportunities - but the industry was nascent, with no established patterns to follow and a steep learning curve for customers.

My mandate: Design a Minimum Viable Experience that could be built and shipped on time while proving the core value proposition.

My Approach: MVE Strategy

I prioritized ruthlessly. The MVP needed to enable two things: calculate emissions → identify hot spots and purchase carbon offsets. Everything else moved to post-launch.

To maximize UX improvements with minimal dev time, I:

Kept the first sketches low-fidelity - Black and white mockups that felt intentionally unfinished to encourage feedback and avoid premature polish
Constrained to 13" screens - Small viewport forced feature prioritization from day one
Annotated extensively - Embedded context, rationale, and edge cases directly in mockups to enable async collaboration

The initial sketch — First sketching up my ideas on paper before moving on to Figma. Click for full sketch

Key Design Decisions

The Loading Screen: Turning Wait Time Into Onboarding

New customers had to wait while we downloaded their financial data. I turned this into an onboarding opportunity.

Design considerations:

Copy designed to be read in under a minute
Progress bar paced to ensure minimum exposure of 7 seconds
No automatic loading of the home page to avoid interrupting reading

The loading screen mockup — Mockup with annotations. Click for full sketch

The final design for the loading screen — The final design. Click for full size

The Overview Page: Immediate Value Clarity

First screen after setup needed to communicate value instantly: your total emissions, trends over time, and biggest contributors.

The overview screen mockup — The overview page mockup with annotations. Click for full size

The final design for the overview screen. Click for full size

White-Label Design System

The product was sold white-label, requiring a flexible design system that could adapt to each client's branding while maintaining UX consistency. I built a modular system with customizable colors, typography, and logos.
(The screens above use one client's theme)

Results & Impact

Timeline

✅ Launched pilot on schedule in 8 weeks

Impact

✅ User testing confirmed the new experience drastically reduced the perceived learning curve
✅ Sales conversations shifted from explaining the UI to demonstrating the platform's value proposition

Business Impact

✅ Validated MVP with initial partners, enabling founders to pursue additional partnerships
✅ Design system enabled rapid white-label customization for new clients

My role

Lead UX Designer (solo designer)

Working with 4 developers and 1 product manager

Deliverables:

8+ annotated screen designs, interaction specifications, developer handoff documentation, UX copywriting

Timeline

8 weeks from kickoff to pilot launch