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STREAMLINE • B2B SAAS • 2023

Redesigning Streamline's asset library for better workflow

TIMELINE

4 months

ROLE

Product Designer (Me!)

TEAM

Founder

Growth Marketeer

Developers

Tl;dr

Streamline is a B2B asset library used by designers, marketers, and developers to browse, customize, and export icons and illustrations. The product had strong assets but weak retention (5%) and conversion (0.9%). I led a four-month redesign focused on simplifying workflows, improving findability, and making value easier to see. After a 5% rollout with HotJar monitoring, feature discovery rose 46%, user retention rose 13%, and conversion moved up about 2%.

↑ 46%

Feature discovery

↑ 13%

User retention

↑ ~2%

Conversion

FINAL SOLUTION & FEATURES

In 4 months, the Streamline app was ready for launch.

https://streamlinehq.com

Browse

Search

Asset card

Customisation

OVERVIEW

Streamline is a B2B SAAS asset library with millions of users.

Streamline is a design tool built around a large catalog of high-quality vector assets like icons and illustrations. Designers, marketers, and developers use it to browse huge sets, drop assets into collections, customize them, and export in the formats and sizes they need for products, decks, or code.

Streamline

WEB APP

PROBLEM

Even though Streamline offered high‑quality assets, users weren’t retaining or converting.

Streamline’s asset library was already strong but the app wasn’t turning visits into habits or paid plans. Retention was low and conversion sat around less than 1%, so revenue didn’t line up with how good the assets actually were.

~5%

Retention

~0.9%

Conversion

LEARNING FROM DATA & USERS

Out of curiosity, I wanted to dig deeper into the existing data to figure out what the missing piece was.

I started with what we already had in Mixpanel for the last 30 days. The funnel made the gap obvious: plenty of traffic and sign-ups, then almost nobody on the upgrade step. A separate view of feature usage showed the same story in a different shape. Search and the color editor got real use, while a long tail of features barely moved.

Users signed up in the last 30 days, but did not upgrade to the premium plan.

Feature usage is low, so assuming that users are unable to discover it or don't find it helpful.

That still did not answer the 'why,' but it directed me towards the real users.

Mixpanel helped understand where people dropped and what was underused, but it couldn't explain the low metrics. I leaned on people with low engagement or stalled conversion so we heard fresh friction. I still ran a few calls with power users so we didn't break workflows that already worked and understanding why they liked Streamline.

Light users

Primary research

Power users

Secondary research

The findings revealed more pain points than I expected and it changed the scope of the project.

Users feel overwhelmed with too many features.

“I don’t see the point of two color editors, it always confuses me.”

Cognitive overload

“I don’t see the point of two color editors, it always confuses me”

The project began as a conversion push and expanded into layout, findability, and end-to-end flows.

Once research showed the app was hard to use, I had to decide what I would and would not try to solve in this project. I brainstormed with Vincent, Khushi and Victor about how to go about with this redesign. I was left with a list of things I could improve, and a list of things to build from scratch.

DESIGN GOAL

Earn conversion by making Streamline useful in real workflows.

Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!

Make the features simpler with intuitive workflows.

Increase perceived value

Enhancing the design and experience to showcase value of the product.

Scalability for future

Making sure the product doesn't feel bloated as new features get added.

DESIGN PROCESS

Thinking through the layout was the most important part, both to simplify the workflow and highlight the perceived value.

By the end of the process I was left with multiple explorations and a design system.

THREE COLUMN LAYOUT
Clear mental model to find, view, customize in L-R order.
Generous space for each zone.
Mirrors how pro tools like Figma are structured.
Three columns can feel dense on smaller screens.
Command Bar Layout
The top bar is always visible and matches natural scanning behavior.
Left rail is compact and scannable.
Two sidebars plus a top bar creates three separate UI zones,
It does not follow the natural order of user workflow.
Toolbar-First Layout
Maximizes horizontal space for browsing icons.
Clean, document-editor feel, familiar from tools like Google docs.
Actions are always visible and accessible without hunting.
The toolbar has to accommodate a lot which risks becoming cluttered fast.
There's no persistent context for what you've selected.
Contextual Popover Layout
The narrowest possible footprint with maximum space for the assets.
Progressive disclosure keeps the UI clean until the user needs detail.
Only works well for power users who know what they want.
Click-to-reveal adds a step to every customization action.
Narrow L rail gives very few affordances so discoverability suffers.

I went ahead with the three-column layout because it gave access to discovery of sets and customizing assets at the same time.

Then I dove into each feature, exploring them individually as standalone experiences.

By the end of the process I was left with multiple explorations and a design system.

TESTING

We launched the new version to 5% of the light user pool and kept our eyes fixed on HotJar recordings.

We fixed internal details and SEO issues before opening to a small user base. Three days in, recordings showed a clear friction point: people were struggling to find export formats because options lived inside a dropdown and were easy to miss.

3 days post test results, exports dropped by ↓ 29%.

The early numbers showed that users were struggling to find format options because the options were displayed under the dropdown, making them much harder to spot.