Northdesk · B2B help desk
Case file / 0
4
One support system, fewer workarounds
Saga
Role
Lead product designer at Latchfield
Team
2 designers, 6 engineers, 1 PM
Tools
Figma, Notion, Maze
Discipline
Design system
Pinned summary
The 30-second version
Support agents used four versions of the same ticket screen, so every new feature added another workaround. I built a shared component library with the engineers and rebuilt the queue on top of it. Tickets handled on time rose to 91%.
1
91%
tickets handled on time
−38%
screen build time
64
shared components
Illustrative demo metrics.
Problem frame
Challenge
Agents worked around the product to answer tickets on time.
Each team had built its own queue view, so filters, priority colours and macro buttons differed from screen to screen. Agents kept a spreadsheet of shortcuts and copied replies from old tickets. Engineers had rebuilt the same table four times. The task was one system for the help desk that still let each team set up its own queues.
Evidence → direction
Approach
I audited every screen before designing a single component.
With two engineers, I printed 140 screens and sorted the repeated parts on a wall. We found 210 one-off components doing about sixty jobs. I also shadowed agents on three shifts to see which parts they relied on when queues were full. Those parts became the first tokens and components. Agents tested them in Maze before any code reached production.
Decision log
Decisions & trade-offs
Shared rules came first, even where a team lost a favourite feature.
01
Tokens before components
We agreed colour, spacing and type tokens first. Screens matched sooner, but new components waited two weeks.
02
One table for every queue
All queues use the same table with saved filters. Building got faster, but teams lost their custom row layouts.
03
Macros in the reply box
Saved replies now sit where agents type. Copying from old tickets stopped, but keyboard shortcuts arrived a month later.
Gallery / Final flow
The support dashboard
The final screen brings the workload chart and the ticket queue together.
After release
Outcome
Agents met more deadlines, and engineers shipped screens faster.
Teams moved to the new queue one at a time over eight weeks. Tickets handled on time rose from 78% to an illustrative 91%. New screens took 38% less time to build, and agents stopped using the shortcut spreadsheet. Two teams still asked for custom columns, so those went into the next release plan.
Next iteration
Learnings
Agents adopted the system fastest where the first components fixed a problem they met every shift. Next I would add usage data to the library, so we can remove parts nobody uses.
TA
Saga got three support teams to agree on one ticket table, and our engineers trusted her specs.
Sample
Tove Ashby, support operations lead at Northdesk
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