Powered jewelers sell more

Nivoda is a global B2B marketplace transforming how jewelers source and purchase diamonds. With rapid growth and expansion into new markets, the company aimed to refine its product experience, making it easier and more intuitive for jewelers to compare, evaluate, and order inventory — all in one platform.
As Lead Product Designer at Holux, I worked with Nivoda’s Product, UX/UI and Customer Support teams to identify usability issues, uncover customer needs, and translate research insights into product improvements.

Problem statement

Despite strong traction in the jewelry industry, Nivoda’s platform had growing complexity as more features and suppliers were added. The main challenges were:

  • Navigating large volumes of similar diamond listings.
  • Understanding differences between similar products quickly.
  • Completing repeat orders efficiently.
  • Interpreting filters, pricing and purchase information with confidence.

Nivoda also needed deeper customer insight to prioritize short-term usability improvements while informing longer-term product and roadmap decisions.

  • Date

    Mar 2022

  • Client Name

    Nivoda

  • Tools

    Benchmark, Personas, User Flows, Wireframes, Prototypes, UI

Research

Stakeholder Alignment

During the project, Holux worked closely with different internal stakeholders:

  • Product Managers to align priorities with the roadmap.
  • Customer Support to review recurring friction points.
  • UX/UI Designers to translate insights into actionable improvements.

    • The approach was agile and strategic, involving weekly review sessions and iterative proposals. The focus was on enhancing usability in core workflows such as search, comparison, and order placement.

Personas
Personas
Personas
Personas

Define

User Insights

To better understand how jewelers interacted with Nivoda’s platform, we conducted remote user interviews and distributed targeted surveys. This mixed-methods approach helped validate internal assumptions and uncover pain points rooted in real behavior and expectations.

  • Unclear comparison: Users struggled to distinguish meaningful differences between similar diamonds, reducing confidence during decision-making.
  • Confusing filters: Some filter attributes were difficult to understand or behaved differently from users’ expectations, leading to frustration and less relevant search results.
  • Inefficient reordering: Returning users had no efficient shortcut to frequently reordered inventory, creating unnecessary steps in a repetitive workflow.
  • Ambiguous microcopy: Technical or unclear language around pricing, availability and purchase terms created uncertainty during the buying process.

These insights shaped the UX strategy and helped prioritize improvements that could directly enhance usability, trust, and conversion.

ux-research
ux-research
ux-research
ux-research

Research

UX Best practices

After the research phase, I translated the main customer pain points into actionable UX recommendations:

  • Filtering: restructured categories, hierarchy and labels to make search criteria easier to understand.
  • Comparison: redesigned the comparison experience to surface the most relevant product differences.
  • Reordering: streamlined the workflow and introduced quicker access to previous purchases.
  • Microcopy & visual cues: reviewed terminology, icons, badges and alerts to improve clarity and confidence.
Personas
Personas
Personas
Personas

Defining

Figma Design System Manager

I built and structured the Figma Design System Manager to support consistent and scalable UI design across Nivoda’s product teams and product areas.

Key Components Delivered:

  • Typography styles aligned with hierarchy and readability standards.
  • Color tokens optimized for clarity, accessibility, and brand alignment.
  • Reusable components (buttons, inputs, tags, cards) with clear naming conventions.
  • 100+ reusable components supporting consistent product design and scalable workflows.
  • Variants and auto-layout logic for flexible, responsive usage.
  • Documentation and usage guidelines to onboard new designers and improve team handoff.

How it improved the product at Nivoda:

  • Consistency: Reduced UI inconsistencies across modules and improved overall design coherence.
  • Speed: Enabled faster iteration and prototyping by using pre-built, validated components.
  • Scalability: Made it easier for distributed teams to contribute to the product while maintaining visual and interaction standards.
  • Collaboration: Strengthened alignment between design, product, and engineering by using shared references and tokens.

UI Design

UI and Master Components

Key Improvements Delivered:

  1. Comparison: redesigned the interface to surface relevant diamond specifications and reduce decision friction.
  2. Filtering: introduced clearer categories and more intuitive filtering logic.
  3. Reordering: streamlined access to previous purchases for returning users.
  4. Microcopy: clarified pricing, availability and purchase terminology to reduce uncertainty and cognitive load.

Final Results

This project with Nivoda was a strong example of how user-centered research can directly shape product strategy and deliver measurable impact. By uncovering real customer pain points and aligning cross-functional teams around those insights, we were able to design solutions that not only improved usability but also strengthened the platform’s value for its core users.

Working alongside Nivoda’s talented internal team, we laid the foundation for a more scalable, intuitive, and trustworthy B2B experience — while empowering their product and design functions with a validated, research-driven approach for future growth.

Impact:

  • +30% task success rate in usability testing.
  • –40% time-to-reorder for returning users.
  • 100+ reusable components established within the Design System.
  • Stronger alignment across Product, Design, Engineering and Customer teams.
  • Foundation for scalable, research-informed product development.