Domain: FinTech / Media Entertainment / B2B Enterprise Architecture
Platform: .com, Angular, Tailwind
The Executive Summary
Warner Bros. Studio Economics: Re-Architecting a Stalled FinTech Platform for $10B+ Global Content Licensing Sales
The Challenge: For over 18 months, an external consultancy failed to deliver a viable and feasible Global Deal Negotiation and Contract Management platform to replace a legacy Content Sales Planning (CSP) system at Warner Bros. The consultancy’s MVP path mistakenly focused on a rigid CRM and financial model—a direction that users explicitly called out as decoupled from how they actually visualize or execute their workflow.
The inherited UX was rigid, focused on system flows over how the team actually worked and tight guiderails that left The Content Sales Planning Team confused and fustrated. Additionally, the UI was static, non-responsive, and relied heavily on narrow sidebar flyouts that squeezed critical data matrices into unusable footprints. Rushing forward on internal assumptions rather than user realities, the existing initiative hit an adoption bottleneck.
The Leadership Intervention: Upon joining the team, I established a comprehensive Design Point-of-View (POV) to steer the initiative away from programmatic assumptions and transition it into an intentional post-MVP vision. I introduced an advanced research and engineering workflow by:
Deploying generative AI to analyze over 30 hours of raw user interviews, extracting high-level behavioral patterns and operational challenges.
Conducting "in the wild" anthropological field observations to study how the CSP team operates as an interconnected organism.
Partnering with engineering to dismantle the rigid flyout model and introduce a fluid, URL-based "Zone Framework" tailored for multi-monitor enterprise workstation environments.
The Systemic Impact: My structural intervention lays the groundwork to pivot the platform from an overly automated, friction-heavy CRM into a powerful, collaborative content-licensing engine. By organizing complex distribution variables (scoping dimensions, lic fees, rebates, holdbacks, and carve-outs) into a responsive spreadsheet-inspired canvas, the platform successfully unlocked product momentum. The strategic framework accelerates title scoping times, minimizes technical debt through tokenized design patterns, and defines a single source of truth that unified engineering and sales operations.
Scope: Operational Turnaround, Agentic AI User Research, Zone-Based Information Architecture, Tokenized JSON Design Systems
The Impact: Repositioned a stalled product path, eliminated user flyout limitations, and built a unified data pipeline that cut down system friction.
🔍 The Friction: Automated Layout Rigidness vs. Human Negotiation Fluidity
The Team Bottleneck: The external consultancy focused on strict workflow automation, pushing aside the deep business expertise of the internal sales planning team. This created feature confusion and generated high user resistance.
The Product Bottleneck: The legacy MVP layout was completely rigid and non-responsive, trapping active contract work areas within narrow sidebar flyouts. This crowded interface hid critical information, leaving teams without a clear overview of complex licensing windows, terms, and territory restrictions.
🧠 The Hands-On Strategic Intervention
I restructured the platform's user experience and operational approach by focusing on design clarity and system momentum:
AI-Powered Discovery Operations: Used generative AI to synthesize over 30 hours of stakeholder interviews and future-state workshop notes, mapping out 70+ user-driven concepts to build executive alignment.
The Full-Page Zone Framework: Developed a URL-based enterprise layout framework that opened up restricted flyout panels into wide, responsive work zones optimized for large workstation displays.
Spreadsheet-Style Ergonomics: Collaborated on custom data tables with BAs that allowed negotiators to track, filter, and modify multiple titles simultaneously on a single screen ($156M+ deal volumes).
Tokenized System Control : Produced a centralized JSON variable system directly inside Figma tokens, establishing a shared, code-ready style library that eliminated technical drift between teams.
💡 The Solution Highlights
Simplified Data Aggregation: Designed a post-MVP roadmap to move the core application from isolated APIs to a central platform architecture, combining Title, Calendar, and Contract data streams.
Contextual Exception Flagging: Built visibility panels that clearly highlight complex contract restrictions, holdbacks, and carve-outs directly inline with the active deal workspace.
Consistent Visual Hierarchies: Applied clear typography systems (Inter) alongside distinct component logic to decrease user cognitive fatigue during long contract review sessions.
Team
M. Ansar - Tech Lead
J. Clover, K. Venoechea - Engineering
S. Szeto, S. Liao - MVP UX/UI Designers
