I brought Haven Cloud's strategic customers into the room and turned what they said into product changes.
As the lead user researcher for Haven Cloud's infrastructure business, I co-led a two-day customer advisory board with chief technology officers from strategic accounts. What they told us went straight into engineering tickets and a five-year plan, and it led to clearer documentation, a billing calculator, a strategy for working alongside other clouds, and a customer feedback tool that I took from zero to launch.
Client
A global cloud provider
I changed names and details to respect my nondisclosure agreements.
My role
Lead user researcher, cloud infrastructure
Focus
Customer advisory board, documentation, billing, and customer feedback
Result
NPS rose at least 5% in every product area
Strategic customers were unhappy with the product and weighing a move to a bigger competitor.
Haven Cloud rents computing power to companies that run their business on it. Some of its most important enterprise accounts, including a major retail customer, were frustrated with the product experience. One chief technology officer told us that colleagues kept asking why the company had picked Haven Cloud instead of one of the bigger cloud providers. These were the people who had bet their own careers on us.
Leadership asked for two things at once. The first was short-term fixes that customers would notice quickly. The second was a clear five-year plan built with those customers, so Haven Cloud spent its people and money on the problems that mattered most to them.
I designed a customer advisory board where executives worked alongside us instead of watching slides.
I was the only researcher among more than twenty product managers and two executives. I partnered with the company's advisory board director, trained the product managers to run interactive sessions, ran the opening session myself, and wrote the final report. Click or tap a card to turn it over.
From the director
I've run CABs for over a decade, and this is the most interactive CAB I've ever seen. We've collected more customer feedback than I thought possible.
Customer advisory board directorHaven Cloud headquarters
Customers told us to get the basics right before anything fancy.
Customers said they did not want more automation yet, while everything they did suggested they needed it. The real message underneath was simpler. They did not trust Haven Cloud yet, and trust had to come from a product that worked, then worked reliably, then was easy to use.
Four findings came out of the coding, and each one pointed to a change Haven Cloud could make.
- Cloud work is messy, so people will always stay in the loop, and the product has to support them.
- Every customer runs a mix of clouds, including competitors, so Haven Cloud had to work well with other clouds and document everything well.
- Nobody is a cloud expert in everything, because teams of specialists each own one small part of a complex system.
- Billing was complicated and time-consuming, and every hour spent on billing was an hour away from customers' real jobs.
The board's findings turned into documentation, billing tools, and a long-term strategy.
Each finding had an owner and a visible change. Several of the changes kept growing for years after the board met. Click or tap a card to turn it over.
Click through the redesigned Help Center and the cost estimator.
I rebuilt these pieces as a working prototype from my screens, restyled in the company's current design language under the name Haven Cloud, with AI writing the code from my designs. The articles, release notes, and rates are sample content, and the estimate is calculated live.
Things to try
- Switch between Before redesign and After redesign to compare the docs landing page.
- Open the Design tile, copy a command, and jump around with the On this page links.
- Answer No in the feedback footer at the bottom of an article and send a note.
- Search for compartment or billing from the top bar.
- Open Cost Estimator and change the processor, cores, or capacity type to watch the total update.
Warm neutrals, a deep ocean teal, and one clear green carried the whole experience.
I pulled this style guide from the prototype, which follows the warm, modern design language the company uses today: soft neutral surfaces, rounded pill buttons, geometric illustration, and light, open headings. Every text color passes WCAG AA contrast.
Color
- Bark
#312D2AThe top bar and the footer. - Ink
#161513Primary pill buttons, headings, and the selected feedback answer. - Ocean
#22505CThe Help Center hero, the overview label, and the active menu item. - Pine
#3A6B4FThe estimate summary and the cost on each configuration card. - Link teal
#00688CLinks, anchor links, and focus outlines. - Ember
#F0715AThe Haven Cloud wordmark and the line under the current tab in the top bar. - Tip sand
#FCF1EATip boxes inside articles, with dark rust text. - Canvas
#F5F4F2The warm off-white page background behind every card.
Type
Page titles
Haven Cloud Documentation
Albert Sans Light
Labels and buttons
Estimate your costs
Albert Sans Semibold
Body
Run this command to list the compartments in your tenancy.
Albert Sans
Code
hc iam compartment list
JetBrains Mono
Components
Help Center hero
A deep ocean banner with a geometric illustration puts the two most common tasks and the latest release notes above the fold, so a new customer can start and a returning customer can see what changed.
Task tiles
Four white tiles overlap the hero with an icon, a verb, and one line each, so customers pick a task instead of hunting through a product list.
Sticky left menu with On this page links
The menu stays in view while customers scroll, and anchor links jump to each section of a long article.
Code block with Copy
Commands sit on a dark panel, wrap instead of scrolling sideways, and every block has a Copy button that copies clean text.
Feedback footer
A yes or no question and an optional note on every article send feedback straight to the team that wrote the article.
Configuration card and estimate summary
Each service gets a card with its own monthly estimate, and a green summary beside the cards explains the math line by line in plain words.
Principles
- Put the answer people came for above the fold, and put search where every page has it.
- Show the math behind every number that touches a customer's money.
- Write for an expert who is new to this part of the product.
- Ask for feedback where the work happens, and make sure a person reads it.
5%
minimum rise in NPS for every product area within the first quarter after the feedback tool launched
Customers stayed, and the feedback kept coming after the board went home.
The board rebuilt trust with top customers, and the changes it started kept paying off long after the two days ended. Click or tap a card to turn it over.
I still bring customers into the room early.
The executives at that board did not want a presentation. They wanted to be heard and to see something change. Today I run workshops and research the same way, so the people who use a product shape it, and every session ends with a change someone can see.
There is plenty more where this came from.
Names, brands, and data in my case studies are changed to protect my clients.
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