Redesigning a Sales Compensation Experience

This started as a usability project, and it did not stay there. Very quickly, it became clear we were dealing with something much bigger than interface improvements.

Context

I worked on an internal sales compensation platform at Cisco. The tool was used by more than 20,000 sellers around the world and played a central role in how people understood their income.

Sales compensation in this environment is inherently complex. It spans multiple products, multi-year deals, and constantly changing plans and incentives. Over time, the platform had been patched together to support this complexity, but the experience had not kept up.

Problem

Sellers could not answer a basic question: how much am I getting paid, and why?

Through early research, I saw a consistent pattern. People did not trust the numbers, they did not understand the calculations, and they spent a significant amount of time trying to verify their pay.

Many had created their own systems to fill the gaps. They maintained spreadsheets, cross-checked data across multiple tools, and relied on informal knowledge sharing within their teams. This added real effort to their day and pulled time away from the work that actually drives revenue.

The tension became clear. We could continue improving the interface of the existing tool, or we could acknowledge that the underlying system was not meeting users’ needs.

My Role

I joined this project as a UX researcher, but my role expanded quickly. As I became more immersed in the problem, I stepped into leading the effort and became the primary point of continuity across the team.

I led research strategy and execution, facilitated cross-functional workshops, and managed alignment with product, design, and executive stakeholders. I also contributed directly to the design work, sketching concepts, working in Figma, and helping shape direction alongside designers.

At peak, I led a pod of about seven people across design and product. I was accountable for the overall direction of the work, not just the research.

Approach

I approached this as a system problem rather than a single-product problem. That meant combining methods to understand both the user experience and the broader ecosystem it operated within.

I ran a multi-phase research program that included surveys to understand scale and patterns, interviews to go deep on behavior, and observational sessions where users walked through their workflows in real time. I also developed jobs-to-be-done frameworks, journey maps, and prioritization models to guide decision-making.

One constraint shaped the work in a meaningful way. This was highly sensitive data, since it directly related to employee compensation. I spent time building trust with stakeholders and compliance teams to gain access to the data and recruit participants responsibly. That slowed the work at the beginning, but it allowed me to ground the research in real data and eventually build a more representative participant panel.

Key Insight

The key realization was that this was not a usability problem. It was a breakdown of trust.

Sellers did not believe the system was correct, and they had no clear way to verify it. Even when the data was accurate, the experience made it hard to feel confident.

The product itself was only part of the system. The real system included all of the workarounds users had built, including spreadsheets, cross-tool comparisons, and manual checks.

Solution

The direction shifted from improving a single tool to redefining the overall experience.

We focused on a few core principles: building trust through transparency, making calculations understandable, helping sellers predict future earnings, and reducing the need to move across multiple systems.

At the same time, we made targeted improvements to the existing platform so users could see some immediate benefit while the larger redesign moved forward.

Impact

The most significant impact was strategic. The project moved from ongoing maintenance to a funded redesign effort with executive sponsorship and dedicated resources.

My work helped secure that investment and define the direction of the new platform, which is now in development with a planned launch in FY27.

We also delivered short-term value. Research findings informed improvements to the existing tool, and those changes helped address some of the most immediate pain points.

On the team side, I built the structure, documentation, and shared understanding that allowed the work to continue successfully after I transitioned off the project.

Takeaways

This project reinforced a few things for me.

Building trust early creates options later. I took a slower approach at the beginning to establish relationships and access data, and that made the work stronger and more credible.

It is important to name the real problem. It is easy to stay at the level of surface issues, but the more impactful work comes from identifying when the system itself needs to change.

Influence matters as much as insight. The direction did not shift until the story landed with leadership and led to a decision.

I also stepped more fully into design in this project. Contributing beyond research helped connect insights to tangible solutions and made the work more actionable.