Visual Design
About the project
Stabilising a fragile MVP and redesigning the core delay notice workflow — from broken prototype to investor-ready demo in three weeks. A 0→1 bootstrapped SaaS project.
Client: Dan Morris of TimeUnbarred
Timeline: 3 weeks to demo. April 2023
Role: Founding Product Designer
Tools: Figma
A snapshot of what was shown at the demo
Situation
Above is a video to explain the value of the product which I storyboarded and art directed also.
The Problem
25% of Australian insolvencies are construction-related.
Missed timebars are a major reason why.
TimeUnbarred was founded by Dan Morris, a civil construction lawyer who'd watched subcontractors lose their legal rights — not because they were wrong, but because they missed a deadline buried in their contract.
The concept was strong. The product was not. When I joined, the MVP was unstable: multiple pathways returned server errors, forms were overwhelming static pages with no conditional logic, and the scope was expanding faster than the team or time could handle. A live investor demo was weeks away.
There were no analytics, no formal user base, and limited access to real subcontractors. If the product failed at demo, the mission stalled.
The Users
Small subcontractors — labourers, site managers, sole traders — operating in a high-pressure, time-poor environment. Often on-site, not at a desk. Low legal literacy, low tolerance for complexity, high exposure to financial risk. They needed the product to think like a site foreman, not a lawyer.
Initial Hypothesis
The product's legal logic was sound. The problem was translation — complex contract obligations needed to become simple, guided actions. If we could reduce the cognitive load and eliminate the broken pathways, the core workflow could stand on its own at demo.
Task
Research
No analytics. No users. Research had to be the product itself.
Without a formal research pipeline, I had to be resourceful. Usability testing became product investigation. I manually stress-tested every pathway — every button, dropdown, form state, and edge case — logging errors, mapping dead ends, and documenting where the logic broke.
Internal workshops with Dan unpacked how timebars functioned in real contracts and where subcontractors typically failed. His casework became the user research. This gave me a working mental model of the domain before a single wireframe was drawn.
Findings and Insights
Broken pathways kills trust instantly
Server errors fired on load.
Buttons led nowhere.
Users were hitting dead ends before they could understand what the product even did.
The form read like a contract — overwhelming, jargon-heavy, and built for a lawyer, not someone on a job site.
Legal complexity mirrored in the UI
New feature requests were arriving faster than bugs were being fixed. Without containment, nothing would work by demo day.
Scope creep threatened everything
Action
One workflow. Fully functional. No dead ends.
The initial solution wasn't adding features — it was containment. I narrowed the MVP to a single critical workflow: the delay notice. Make it work flawlessly, end-to-end, before anything else.
Sketching the Form Structure
I explored multiple approaches to breaking up the static, overwhelming one-page form. Ideas included stepped sections that appeared in place, progress bars, icon-led layouts, and yes/no toggles to drive conditional logic. The constraint: it had to be buildable within the timeline.
Before: A Fragile, Overwhelming Flow
The original form had up to 7 visible steps across a single page. Server errors fired on load. There was no clear visual hierarchy, no conditional logic — every possible pathway was exposed at once, regardless of relevance to the user's situation.
The "Server not reachable" banner was appearing on page load before users could do anything
After: Structured, Conditional, Guided
I rebuilt the delay notice into a 4-step dynamic workflow. Conditional logic eliminated irrelevant pathways — if a question was answered "No", subsequent dependent steps were hidden. Simple yes/no toggles replaced open-ended legal prompts. Every section ended with a clear "Save and Next" action.
For users uncertain about their contract clause, a fallback path allowed them to upload their contract and receive the relevant clause by email — removing a blocker without requiring legal knowledge on the spot.
Key Design Decisions
01
Dynamic conditional forms over static pages
Showing all steps at once created cognitive overload and exposed edge cases that didn't apply to every user. Conditional logic meant users only saw what was relevant to their situation.
02
Yes/No toggles over open-ended legal fields
Users weren't lawyers. Plain-language binary questions let them answer confidently without needing to understand contract terminology. Structured prompts also reduced incomplete submissions.
03
SMS deadline reminders as a compliance feature
Timebars fail because people forget. SMS reminders were low-effort to implement and directly addressed the behavioural risk — prompting action within strict contractual windows without requiring the user to remember.
04
Intelligent fallback to manual review
Edge cases that exceeded the conditional logic weren't dead ends — they were routed to Dan for review. This kept the product moving without breaking the user experience or requiring engineering to solve every scenario upfront.
Demo Day
On 4 April 2023, Dan presented the product live to 30+ construction industry professionals. The redesigned delay notice workflow ran on screen — stable, complete, end-to-end.
Result
Impact
30+
Industry professionals at live demo
9
Prospective trial participants generated
3 Weeks
From broken MVP to demo-ready product
From fragile concept to functioning prototype — in two weeks.
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Delivered a stable, end-to-end delay notice workflow within a two-week window
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Reduced dependency on manual legal review through structured conditional form logic
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Eliminated critical error pathways that had been breaking on page load
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Replaced legal jargon with plain-language prompts, reducing user error and incomplete submissions
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Integrated SMS reminders to operationalise compliance behaviour
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Presented to 30+ industry professionals — 9 expressed interest in joining the trial cohort
A snapshot of what was shown at the demo
Reflection
What I learned
No users, no analytics, no playbook. Just constant triage — what matters, what can wait, what gets cut. I learned how to stabilise a fragile product under pressure, wear every hat at once, and keep a founder's ambition in check without killing it.
What I'm proud of
Delivering a complete, functional workflow that held up in front of a live industry audience — on a bootstrapped budget, in two weeks, with no existing user base to validate against.
What I'd do differently
Introduce structured user testing earlier, even a handful of subcontractors doing think-alouds would have validated the form restructure faster.
I'd also establish scope guardrails with the founder from day one, rather than trying to manage feature requests reactively.
Future Scope
Onboarding that reinforces the financial risk prevention message. Structured user testing with real subcontractors. Exploring mobile-first design for on-site use. Expanding conditional logic to cover payment claims and security of payment legislation.