Prospect Development Dashboard to Build lasting client pipelines
Team
Disha / Ethan / Bon
timeline
Jan - May '25
RESULTS
80% user satisfaction post-launch, 14m --> 5m change in time for data entry
Gunderson Dettmer is a law firm specializing in venture capital and the startup ecosystem.
Prospect development is the process of creating connections with people and organizations who may grow into client relationships down the road.
However, junior attorneys avoid working on this process due to an inefficient and unappealing system.
SOLUTION
System built on 2 single use tools that help attorneys enter data quickly and manage prospect relationships.
NOTABLE FEATURES
Email templates to reduce thinking for prospect outreach.
Information panels to provide context while operating dashboard.
Mobile app to improve in-person, real-time data entry.
PROCESS BEGINS HERE
OLD SYSTEM
Gunderson Dettmer's existing system for prospect development was fragmented, leading to a lot of confusion for junior attorneys. It was also unappealing and did not excite the attorneys.
RIPPLE EFFECTS
Yes, this problem affects junior attorneys and their success at the firm. It also has ripple effects for Gunderson Dettmer's business: associates who don't start building their network early miss out on relationships that take years to develop, and those gaps are hard to recover from down the line.
I started learning about the stakeholders through semi-structured interviews. Our project manager was also a senior attorney at Gunderson Dettmer.
STAKEHOLDERS
The senior attorney and junior attorneys had a mismatch for how they thought about prospect development. We had to balance these differing expectations.
OPPORTUNITY
Motivate junior attorneys to engage in prospect development by making the system efficient and rewarding.
After this research, I got to figuring out what parts the system would actually need. The problem was not narrowed down to a single software solution, so I mapped out where the tech interventions could be.
CHALLENGE
Mapping the process was really difficult since 3 stakeholders were involved, with different accounts of what the user journey looks like.
I had to think about whether our system should account for these touchpoints and allow for independent insertions of people in the system, or whether the solution could be simpler.
A HARDER CHALLENGE
Also, Gunderson Dettmer was having a small "poaching attorneys" problem and going through a massive reorg this exact month, so our team was really struggling with getting accounts that would work for the future of the company.
Automations were often brought up in meetings. Our PM (Senior Attorney) assumed things like "Thank You emails" and "Networking reminders" could be AI-automated.
I brought forward the risks:
Does Gunderson Dettmer have resources to plug-in high-quality AI models? Are Junior Attorneys comfortable with sending out automated emails?
FINAL DECISIONS
With so much uncertainty in the air, we decided the best tool in the short term would be specific to junior attorneys, and would handle only a small part of their process. In the future, we could continue making this system more robust.
With some structure on what tasks we wanted our system to handle, we moved forward with the layout of the desktop and mobile apps, and how they would support each other.
LOW-FI
All interfaces should simple and easy to navigate, keep in mind, most attorneys don't use any fancy softwares. We attempted to keep many design patterns in line with Apple and Notion.
COLORWAY
We wanted to maintain the blue of Gunderson Dettmer, but imply a fresher, newer, system with a colder, more vibrant shade of blue. Blues and grays were dominant in the system to keep it simple.
Several aspects of the system were designed. In this case study, I'm going to deep dive on 2 important aspects of the design and their process.
PROGRESS INDICATOR
Our dashboard had to effectively communicate progress to attorneys, but "progress" is a fairly complex concept in prospect development.
These are human relationships that are being tracked, so they have a lot of volatility and predication factors.
EMAIL TEMPLATES
Email is the most common form of communication between attorneys and prospects. Our PM wanted emails to be instructions: rigid and pedagogical. Junior attorneys wanted a more flexible process. We aimed to find a balance between the two.
The ecosystem was tested with 2 junior attorneys on 6 representative tasks. Attorneys were excited to use this new system, but found points where they were confused or were dissatisfied with the solution. I made changes accordingly.
~80% user satisfaction was achieved in this testing. Additionally, we compared the time for data entry in this new system vs. the old one, and found that it went down from 14m to 5m. Yay :)
Here are some more snapshots of the final designs.
