Product UX/UI and design systems for SaaS and complex digital products
Make complex products easier to learn, use, and grow.
Area of Expertise
Product UX/UI and design systems for SaaS and complex digital products
Make complex products easier to learn, use, and grow.
Suits & Sandals is a product UX/UI design agency for SaaS companies, digital platforms, portals, and organizations building sophisticated applications around complex workflows.
We help teams understand how people need to use a product, organize features and information around those needs, design clearer interfaces, and create systems that make the experience more consistent as the product evolves.
Start a conversation
Explore our product-design work
What does a product UX/UI design agency do?
A product UX/UI design agency helps organizations determine how a digital product should work, how users should move through it, and how the interface should communicate actions, information, and system behavior.
The work can include:
• Product and user research
• UX audits
• Workflow and journey mapping
• Information architecture
• User flows
• Wireframes
• Interactive prototypes
• Interface design
• Data visualization
• Usability testing
• Accessibility considerations
• Product design systems
• Developer documentation and handoff
UX focuses on the structure, behavior, and usability of the experience.
UI design focuses on how that experience is visually expressed and how people understand and interact with the interface.
The disciplines are closely connected. A polished interface cannot resolve a poorly structured workflow, and a strong user flow can still become difficult to use when the visual hierarchy and interaction patterns are inconsistent.
Product-design problems rarely live on a single screen.
A confusing interface may initially appear to be a visual problem.
The page feels crowded. Important actions are difficult to find. Similar controls behave differently. Users need repeated training. New features make the product increasingly inconsistent.
But those symptoms often point to deeper issues.
The workflow may reflect internal processes rather than the user’s mental model. Features may have been added without reconsidering the larger experience. Different teams may have designed separate areas of the product using different assumptions. The product may lack a shared system for navigation, hierarchy, interaction, and feedback.
Redesigning individual screens without addressing those underlying relationships can produce a cleaner interface without creating a clearer product.
We look at the complete experience: what users are trying to accomplish, what information they need, how individual tasks connect, and how the system should support them over time.
Experience across multi-tenant applications, resource platforms, learning systems, assessment tools, portals, content ecosystems, and other complex digital experiences.
This work is often needed when…
Users require extensive training to complete routine tasks.
The product may be powerful, but basic workflows depend too heavily on institutional knowledge, documentation, or individual guidance.
The interface has grown feature by feature.
New capabilities have been added over time without reconsidering the navigation, hierarchy, terminology, or overall product experience.
Different parts of the product feel unrelated.
Separate teams, development cycles, or inherited interfaces have created inconsistent patterns, components, and visual systems.
Users can complete a task, but not confidently.
The interface may technically function while leaving people uncertain about what happened, what to do next, or whether they made the correct choice.
Important information is difficult to interpret.
Dashboards, tables, reports, assessments, and data-heavy interfaces may contain the right information without helping users recognize what matters.
The product serves several roles or permission levels.
Administrators, operators, managers, contributors, customers, and other users may require distinct workflows within one shared system.
Product and engineering teams are solving the same design problems repeatedly.
Without reusable components and interaction standards, teams spend unnecessary time recreating patterns and resolving inconsistencies.
The interface no longer reflects the brand.
The company may have developed a stronger identity and digital presence while the product continues to feel visually and tonally disconnected.
The product is preparing to scale.
New features, customers, markets, teams, or platforms require a more systematic approach to product design.
The team knows something is not working but lacks a clear redesign path.
Feedback, support requests, analytics, and internal observation may reveal friction without identifying the underlying cause or the appropriate scope of change.
Product clarity happens at four levels.
A useful product must help people understand more than the appearance of an individual screen.
Task clarity
Users should understand what they can accomplish and which action will move them toward that outcome.
That requires:
• Recognizable goals
• Clear calls to action
• Understandable terminology
• Relevant context
• Appropriate defaults
• Visible next steps
Flow clarity
Individual screens should connect into a logical sequence.
Users need to understand:
• Where they are
• How they arrived there
• What information is required
• What will happen after an action
• How to correct a mistake
• How to leave and return to the process
Interface clarity
Visual hierarchy and interaction patterns should make the product easier to interpret.
That includes:
• Navigation
• Layout
• Typography
• Components
• Forms
• Tables
• Data visualization
• States and feedback
• Errors and validation
• Responsive behavior
System clarity
The complete product should behave consistently enough for people to build confidence and transfer what they learn from one area to another.
That requires shared principles for:
• Component behavior
• Language and terminology
• Permissions
• Statuses
• Notifications
• Data presentation
• Interaction patterns
• Accessibility
• Brand expression
A product can succeed at one level and still struggle at another.
Our work identifies where clarity is breaking down and creates a more coherent experience across the system.
Good product UX begins with the work users are trying to accomplish.
Organizations naturally think about products through features, departments, databases, and technical architecture.
Users tend to think in terms of goals.
They want to:
• Find a resource
• Complete an assessment
• Review their progress
• Compare information
• Make a decision
• Manage a team
• Resolve a problem
• Submit a request
• Understand what changed
• Determine what to do next
Product UX translates the system the organization has built into an experience that supports those recognizable goals.
That does not mean ignoring technical, operational, or business constraints.
It means organizing those constraints around a clearer understanding of how the product will actually be used.
What the work can include
The scope depends on the product’s maturity, complexity, existing interface, internal team, and the business need driving the engagement.
Product discovery and UX research
We develop a clearer understanding of the product, its users, and the workflows the experience needs to support.
The work may include:
• Leadership and stakeholder interviews
• User interviews
• Existing-product reviews
• UX audits
• Analytics and support-feedback review
• Competitive and comparative analysis
• User-role definition
• Journey mapping
• Task analysis
• Requirements and constraint mapping
• Product-design recommendations
Information architecture and workflow design
We define how information, features, tasks, and decisions should be organized.
The work may include:
• Product information architecture
• Navigation systems
• User flows
• Workflow mapping
• Role- and permission-based experiences
• Feature hierarchy
• Content and data relationships
• Dashboard planning
• Form and assessment flows
• Error and exception planning
• Wireframes
Prototyping and validation
We make the experience tangible before significant development effort is committed.
The work may include:
• Low- and high-fidelity wireframes
• Interactive prototypes
• Workflow demonstrations
• Concept validation
• Usability-test planning
• User feedback sessions
• Stakeholder reviews
• Iterative design
• Development feasibility discussions
Prototypes create a shared reference point for evaluating the experience before decisions become more expensive to change.
Product UI design
We translate the approved product structure into a clear and coherent interface.
The work may include:
• Visual interface design
• Navigation and layout systems
• Forms and inputs
• Tables and data-heavy views
• Dashboards
• Charts and data visualization
• Empty, loading, error, and success states
• Responsive behavior
• Accessibility considerations
• Motion and interaction guidance
• Product illustration and iconography
Product design systems
We create reusable principles, components, patterns, and documentation that help the product remain consistent as it grows.
The work may include:
• Design-system audits
• Foundations and design tokens
• Typography and color systems
• Spacing and layout rules
• Component libraries
• Component variants and states
• Form and validation patterns
• Navigation patterns
• Data-display standards
• Accessibility guidance
• Usage documentation
• Figma libraries
• Developer specifications
• Governance recommendations
Engineering collaboration and implementation support
We help translate product decisions into a form internal or external development teams can implement.
That may include:
• Development-ready Figma files
• Component and interaction specifications
• Responsive behavior documentation
• State and edge-case planning
• Design reviews
• Engineering handoff
• Implementation QA
• Design-system coordination
• Ongoing product-design support
We can collaborate with an internal engineering team or a specialized development partner responsible for building the application.
How we approach product-design engagements
Understand
We learn how the product works, what users need to accomplish, where friction occurs, and which technical or organizational constraints shape the experience.
Model
We organize users, roles, information, tasks, workflows, and product states into a clearer representation of the system.
Prototype
We translate the proposed experience into flows, wireframes, and interactive prototypes that teams can evaluate before implementation.
Design
We establish the interface, visual hierarchy, components, behaviors, and states needed to make the experience understandable and coherent.
Systematize
We identify reusable patterns and create a product design system appropriate to the scale and maturity of the application.
Support
We collaborate with engineering during implementation, review the developed experience, and help the product continue to evolve.
The process is not always strictly linear. Product decisions frequently reveal new questions, constraints, and opportunities that require iteration.
The goal is to make those discoveries before they become embedded inconsistently throughout the product.
What stronger product UX helps you do
Reduce friction in important workflows
Help users complete tasks with fewer unnecessary decisions, interruptions, and sources of uncertainty.
Improve product adoption
Make the product easier to understand during onboarding and easier to use without extensive training or support.
Increase confidence
Give users clearer feedback about system status, completed actions, required information, and next steps.
Organize complex information
Turn data, features, content, and system behavior into interfaces that help people recognize what matters.
Support several user roles
Create distinct but coherent experiences for administrators, customers, managers, contributors, and other users.
Improve consistency
Give product and engineering teams shared interaction patterns, visual standards, and reusable components.
Accelerate future design work
Reduce the need to solve common interface problems from the beginning each time a new feature is introduced.
Align brand and product experience
Create a clearer relationship between what the company promises and what users encounter inside the application.
Make development decisions more concrete
Give engineering teams defined workflows, states, interactions, and component behavior rather than asking them to resolve major design questions during implementation.
Create a product that can evolve more coherently
Establish systems capable of supporting new features, teams, users, and use cases without allowing the experience to fragment.
A design system is more than a component library.
A component library collects reusable interface elements.
A design system establishes the broader rules governing how and why those elements should be used.
A useful system may include:
Foundations
• Color
• Typography
• Spacing
• Grids
• Elevation
• Iconography
• Motion
• Accessibility principles
Components
• Buttons
• Inputs
• Selectors
• Tables
• Cards
• Navigation
• Modals
• Notifications
• Charts
• Filters
Patterns
• Form completion
• Search and filtering
• Data entry
• Editing
• Approvals
• Account management
• Empty states
• Error recovery
• Onboarding
Documentation
• Usage guidance
• Component behavior
• Variants and states
• Content guidance
• Responsive rules
• Accessibility requirements
• Development specifications
Governance
• How new components are proposed
• Who approves changes
• How design and code remain aligned
• How exceptions are evaluated
• How the system is maintained
The appropriate system depends on the organization.
An early-stage product may need a focused foundation and core set of reusable patterns. A mature multi-product organization may require more extensive documentation, governance, and coordination across design and engineering.
The goal is not to create the largest possible design system.
It is to create enough shared structure to improve the product and the way teams work on it.
Selected product and platform work
Next Street Financial
Improving and expanding a multi-tenant digital-product ecosystem
We provide ongoing product UX/UI support for Next Street Financial across several connected applications.
Our work has included major UX improvements to its primary resource-hub application, the design of a diagnostic-assessment experience, and the design of a learning-management application.
We also developed a shared Figma design system to improve interface consistency and provide a stronger foundation for continued product development across the multi-tenant platform.
Explore our product UX/UI work for Next Street Financial
Association of Pickleball Players
Improving the usability and scalability of a complex digital platform
Our ongoing work with the Association of Pickleball Players has included UX improvements, redesigned core pages, new functionality, and a comprehensive rebuild to replace heavy and unreliable legacy code.
The broader digital ecosystem spans tournaments, rankings, athletes, destinations, venues, news, sponsors, and audience-specific resources, requiring reusable components and clear interaction patterns across a substantial amount of interconnected content.
Explore our platform UX and development work for APP
Custom digital-product partnerships
Connecting product strategy and UX with specialized development
We also collaborate with application-development partners when a product requires custom engineering beyond our internal development focus.
In those engagements, Suits & Sandals can lead or support product discovery, UX architecture, user flows, prototyping, UI design, and design-system development while the engineering partner builds and maintains the underlying application.
This model gives clients access to focused product-design expertise without requiring the design and technical teams to operate in isolation.
Discuss a custom product engagement
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between UX and UI design?
UX design focuses on how a product is structured and used. It includes research, information architecture, user flows, workflows, wireframes, interaction planning, and usability.
UI design focuses on how the product is visually expressed. It includes layout, typography, color, components, hierarchy, states, data presentation, and interaction details.
A successful product requires the two disciplines to work together.
What is SaaS product design?
SaaS product design is the process of planning and designing the experience of a software-as-a-service application.
It can include understanding users, organizing workflows, designing interfaces, prototyping functionality, testing concepts, creating a design system, and collaborating with engineering during implementation.
What is a product design system?
A product design system is a shared collection of principles, foundations, components, interaction patterns, and documentation used to create and maintain a consistent digital product.
It helps designers and developers reuse established solutions while giving users a more predictable experience.
When does a product need a design system?
A design system becomes particularly valuable when a product contains many repeated interface patterns, is being worked on by several designers or developers, serves multiple applications or tenants, or has become inconsistent as features have been added.
The system does not need to be enormous. Its scale should reflect the actual needs and maturity of the product team.
Can you improve an existing product without redesigning everything?
Yes.
An engagement can focus on a specific workflow, part of the application, UX audit, interface system, or collection of high-priority usability issues.
We can also identify foundational changes that improve consistency without replacing every screen simultaneously.
Do you conduct user research and usability testing?
Research and validation can be included when the engagement, access to users, timeline, and budget support them.
The approach may include stakeholder interviews, user interviews, workflow observation, analytics and support-data review, prototype testing, or structured feedback sessions.
Can you work with our internal product and engineering teams?
Yes.
We can integrate with internal product managers, designers, developers, subject-matter experts, and other stakeholders.
Our role can range from leading a defined product initiative to supplementing an existing team with UX, interface, prototyping, or design-system expertise.
Do you develop custom software products?
Our primary role in custom software is product strategy, UX, UI, prototyping, and design-system development.
We typically collaborate with the client’s internal engineers or a specialized application-development partner responsible for the product’s technical architecture, back end, and implementation.
What do developers receive at handoff?
The exact deliverables depend on the project, but may include organized Figma files, responsive layouts, component specifications, states and variants, interaction notes, workflows, prototypes, design tokens, assets, and implementation guidance.
We can also participate in development reviews and QA to help the implemented product remain aligned with the approved experience.
How long does a product UX/UI engagement take?
The timeline depends on the number and complexity of workflows, user roles, research requirements, state of the existing product, depth of the design system, and engineering coordination involved.
A focused workflow or UX audit may be completed relatively quickly. A multi-tenant application, substantial redesign, or new product system may require a longer phased engagement.
This work often connects with
Brand Positioning & Messaging
Clarify the product’s value, audience, and story before translating those ideas into workflows and interfaces.
Explore brand positioning and product-messaging services
Website Strategy, UX & Development
Create a marketing website that helps people understand and evaluate the product before entering the application.
Explore website strategy, UX, and development
Embedded Creative & Digital Services
Add ongoing product, interface, design-system, website, and creative support as the digital experience continues to evolve.
Explore fractional creative and digital support
Relevant audiences
Platforms & Digital Products
Brand and experience strategy for SaaS companies, software products, portals, and complex digital ecosystems.
Explore branding for SaaS platforms and digital products
Healthtech & Life Sciences
Product and platform experiences for organizations balancing specialized workflows, technical information, and several stakeholder needs.
Explore healthtech and life sciences branding
Technical B2B & Expert-Led Companies
Digital-product and portal experiences for specialized organizations whose tools and workflows reflect substantial domain expertise.
Explore B2B branding for technical companies
Growth & Repositioning Brands
Product experiences and design systems for companies whose digital offering has evolved beyond its original structure or interface.
Explore brand repositioning for growing companies
A powerful product should not require users to fight through its complexity.
Let’s organize the workflows, clarify the interface, and create a product system that is easier to use and easier to evolve.
Tell us what you’re working on