Stakeholder interviews · 3-day workshop · Current/future-state journey mapping · Roadmapping
Co-Creating the Vision for an AI-Powered Future State
Reframing a tooling problem into a trust-and-adoption problem for a national hardware co-op — and winning the work to build the answer.
Hero image — future-state vision / dashboard concepts
ROLE
Experience Strategist (research & strategy lead)
CLIENT
National hardware store co-op
TIMELINE
6 weeks
TEAM
Me + designer, tech/dev, product owner · client experience team
MY FOCUS
Discovery · journey mapping · vision · roadmap
METHODS
Interviews · synthesis · 3-day workshop · roadmapping
THE CHALLENGE
The co-op wanted to help store owners run better businesses — equipping field teams to advise stores and giving owners insights to improve performance. But the experience didn't match the ambition. Teams relied on fragmented tools, each with partial data and inconsistent metrics. Adoption was uneven, and trust in the data was low.
The brief pointed at tooling: build an AI-powered insights platform. But the deeper risk was that a system designed to drive better decisions was one people didn't fully believe in. Build the right product on that foundation, and nobody would use it.
MY ROLE
I led research and experience strategy — and made the call that changed the project's direction. Early in discovery I flagged that the real risk wasn't building the wrong product; it was building the right product no one would adopt. I raised the reframe internally, and the team redirected the engagement around it: from validating a tool to understanding trust.
Owned discovery and the current- and future-state journey maps across both audiences
Defined the AI-powered future-state vision and the phased 18–24 month roadmap
Worked alongside a designer, tech leads, and a product owner, with the client's experience team as partners
APPROACH
Discovery built around decisions, not features
Led stakeholder interviews on how field teams and store owners actually make decisions today; synthesized findings into a clear articulation of where trust and adoption break down.
Three days to alignment
Led a 3-day cross-functional workshop aligning teams on user needs, data realities, and success metrics — the client's functions in one room, working from one picture.
Journey mapping as the spine
Owned current- and future-state maps across field teams and store owners; identified the moments that matter, where data could drive real decisions.
A vision with a sequence
Defined the AI-powered future state and a phased 18–24 month roadmap, pointing the pilot at the highest-risk adoption barriers first.
SOLUTION
The research surfaced a core tension: field teams needed credibility to influence store owners; owners needed clarity to act confidently. Neither had it consistently. The problem wasn't a lack of data — it was a lack of cohesion and interpretability.
That produced a clear hypothesis: adoption would rise only if the experience shifted from reporting data to guiding decisions — from "here's your data" to "here's what to do, and why it matters." Four principles anchored the future state: clarity over complexity, guidance over reporting, trust through transparency, and context-aware insights.
Current/future-state journey maps
IMPACT
The work created alignment and momentum, not just a vision: a shared future state grounded in real user needs, the trust and adoption barriers named before they could derail implementation, a pilot strategy targeting the highest-risk challenges first, and an 18–24 month roadmap. The client's conversation shifted from "what features should we build?" to "how do we create a system people actually trust and use?"
And the clearest proof the strategy landed: our team won the development work to build the tool.
WHY IT MATTERS
The most important decision on this project wasn't a design decision — it was choosing what problem to solve. The brief said tooling; the risk was adoption. Naming that early, and making the case for it, changed the scope of everything downstream. It's the moment I'd point to as the shift from researcher to strategist.
It's also what strategic leadership is ultimately measured by: the client didn't just agree with the vision — they funded the build.
NEXT PROJECT
Albertsons →
© Millie Rosasco