B2B SaaS
Product Design, UX Design
Affinity Mapping, User Interviews, User Journeys, User Flows, UI Designs
Users were consistently missing key dates and follow-ups across the product lifecycle. From urgent follow ups to high-level KPIs, the absence of a reliable, contextual reminder system was creating misalignment within teams.
Additionally, personal to-dos and team handoffs had no standardized tracking, which made it hard to stay accountable.
I’ve started adding reminders in my notes or calendar, but it’s easy to lose track. There’s no central place for this inside the product.
I don’t always know when I’m expected to follow up unless I make a note somewhere.
Our goal was to build a reliable reminder experience that empowered both manual and intelligent system-driven reminders.
From user interviews and usage data, we found two major workflows:
Manual Planning: Users wanted to set custom, recurring reminders for themselves or delegate them to teammates.
Automated Tracking: Users wanted the system to alert them when Issues were stalled, or KPIs were due, without requiring manual input.
We needed to design a system that supported both, while still being intuitive, non-intrusive, and highly visible.
To create a centralised, easy-to-manage reminder system.
goal 1
Allow users to create personal reminders and support delegation to other team members
goal 2
Set contextual system reminders for stalled engagements. For e.g. Send emails to nudge users to log email
goal 3
System reminders to follow up on KPIs with due dates
goal 4
Customise preferences for notifications across channels like in-app or email
To streamline task and follow-up management, we introduced two types of reminders: user-created and system-generated. Custom reminders empower users to create one-time or recurring notifications for themselves or teammates, directly from the overview page.
System reminders, on the other hand, intelligently nudge users about Issues lacking updates, interactions, or agreed actions, and flag KPIs that are due.
Feature 1
Recurring reminders with flexible scheduling (daily to yearly)
Feature 2
Delegation of reminders to team members
Feature 3
Smart system reminders for stalled or incomplete Issues
Feature 4
Contextual tracking through the overview page and notifications
Behaviour Design:
Applying Nir Eyal's Trigger Principle
To encourage consistent use of reminders, we applied Nir Eyal’s "Hook Model" specifically the concept of triggers that prompt user action.
External Triggers
Notifications (email or in-app) were timed to appear just before an action was due, acting as a nudge.
Internal Triggers
We designed the system so that users associated the act of reading an Issue or KPI with immediately logging a follow-up. This reduced friction between intention and action.
Action
One-click access from notifications or the overview dashboard made reminder creation or response feel effortless.
Reward:
Immediate confirmation, the satisfaction of tracking completion, and visibility in the Done tab served as intrinsic rewards.
Investment
As users added more reminders or delegated tasks, they became more invested in maintaining the system — creating a feedback loop.
Designing the widget for custom reminders
Keeping Jakob's law in mind, I designed the widget to keep key information handy. User's could switch between tabs to what's upcoming and what's done. Reminders were overdue were marked red while the ones due today were marked as yellow.
Designing the "other" tab for notification panel to host all system reminders
A clean, intuitive reminder and follow-up system integrated directly into the daily workflow. From overdue agreed actions to missing interactions, users are gently nudged to stay accountable. The calendar view and Suggested Follow-ups card surface exactly what matters, when it matters, helping teams avoid silos and drive timely action without needing to dig for updates.
This experience reminded me how important it is to speak directly to users, revisit assumptions, and iterate on both the interface and the emotional value of a feature. Embedding reminders within the flow of work was a good start but we’ve still got room to make user-created reminders feel as natural and essential as the system ones.
User engagement
Almost 30% of the user have created the first custom reminder
Adoption rate
Users integrated reminders with their Microsoft Outlook account
