From Feature Request to Shared Strategy

Turning an “Ordinances Ready” button request into a user-centered strategy

Before: Feature request – Add a button

After: Strategic solution – Align business goals with user needs

My Role: UX Designer

Led discovery and strategic alignment to transform a feature request into a meaningful, user-centered opportunity that bridged leadership goals and member needs.

Overview

At first, our team began sketching possible solutions. But as we dug in, it became clear that we didn’t yet understand what problem this button was supposed to solve — or for whom. Through continuous discovery, user interviews, and strategic alignment with leadership, we transformed a narrow feature request into a meaningful solution grounded in real user needs.

By reframing the conversation from “what to build” to “why it matters,” we helped leadership clarify business goals, uncovered key user pain points, and avoided major product risks. The result wasn’t just a better design — it was a better strategy that reconnected leadership goals to member needs.

Context

Leadership had identified an opportunity to help more members take their ancestors’ names to the temple. The initial idea — to add an “Ordinances Ready” button within Ancestry — seemed like a simple way to make that happen.

However, during early explorations, we realized two major issues:

The business goals behind the request weren’t clearly defined.
The user needs this button was meant to solve weren’t yet understood.

We could have jumped straight into implementation, but instead, we paused to ask a bigger question:

What’s the real problem our users are trying to solve?

That question set the stage for a deeper exploration into what members truly needed — and what success should look like.

Leadership wanted a quick win, while our team wanted to ensure it was the right win.

Challenge

The challenge was twofold:

Leadership wanted a quick win, while
Our team wanted to ensure it was the right win.

We recognized the risks described by Marty Cagan — value, usability, feasibility, and viability — were all in play. Without a clear understanding of user motivation or business outcomes, we risked building something that added friction rather than value.

So instead of delivering a button, we set out to understand the journey users take when they bring an ancestor to the temple — and where they actually struggle. We had to balance urgency with insight — helping stakeholders see that slowing down would actually move us forward faster.

Approach & Process

Reframing the Problem

We began with whiteboarding and mockups, but they didn’t help communicate the real issues we were uncovering. The conversation kept circling around the button, not the user.

To break that cycle, we pivoted to a continuous discovery process — pairing closely with our PM to identify and interview ideal customers who actively use both FamilySearch and Ancestry.

2. Watching Real Behavior

Through contextual interviews, we observed how users naturally worked between the two products. One participant, Judy, captured what nearly everyone expressed:

“I just want to bring my ancestors’
names to the temple.”

– Judy (Echoed across all participants)

Her words reflected the shared motivation across participants — the desire to accomplish something deeply meaningful, not just complete a task. This realization reframed our focus from adding a feature to enabling a purpose.

3. Mapping the Real Journey

From our interviews, we mapped the process members follow to accomplish their goal of bringing ancestors’ names to the temple:

Identify a research gap–Pain Point 2. Research on Ancestry 3. Connect data to FamilySearch–Pain Point 4. Reserve ordinances 5. Take names to the temple

When we overlaid user pain points on this journey, it became clear that the hardest steps weren’t at the end — where leadership had requested a button — but much earlier when the user identifies a research gap and when connecting data between Ancestry and FamilySearch.

To better understand where members struggled, we mapped their end-to-end journey and placed user pain points and opportunities under each step.

Mapping the user journey revealed the real opportunities. By visualizing each step members take, we uncovered that the greatest friction — and potential value — lay earlier in the process, not at the point of ordinance reservation.

This collective insight reframed the opportunity: the greatest impact would come from improving the journey, not adding another feature.

4. Aligning Leadership Through Storytelling

To communicate what we’d learned, we visualized real user journeys and shared them with leadership. Seeing how members actually moved between tools — and where they encountered friction — created a powerful moment of clarity.

These stories helped shift the conversation from “How do we add a button?” to “How do we make it easier for members to reach their goal?” We summarized this shift in thinking to make it tangible for leadership.

Through this process, we:

Clarified the business goal around helping more members successfully complete the journey
Aligned leadership on where to focus for the greatest impact
Grounded decisions in user evidence rather than assumptions
Mitigated major product risks early — value, usability, feasibility, and viability

The discussion changed from delivering a feature to defining a shared strategy for enabling meaningful experiences.

We avoided a high-cost, low-impact feature – and gained a shared strategy.

Outcome

This outcome wasn’t accidental — it was the result of leading with discovery and reframing the problem at its root. By slowing down to understand the problem, we avoided building a high-cost, low-impact feature and instead shaped a more strategic path forward.

The project evolved from:

“Add an Ordinances Ready button on Ancestry"

“Help members more easily gather ordinances ready names from Ancestry.”

This shift created shared clarity across teams and helped leadership see how solving upstream user challenges would have a greater overall impact.

This experience reinforced the importance of taking time to understand the real problem before proposing solutions — and showed how UX can bridge the gap between leadership vision and user reality.

UX can bridge the gap between leadership vision and user reality.

Reflection & Takeaways

This project reinforced that strategic design isn’t about speed—it’s about solving the right problem with clarity and purpose.

By grounding decisions in real user journeys, I was able to help leadership move from assumptions to alignment, creating clarity and focus across teams. The process reaffirmed my belief that UX is most powerful when it connects organizational vision, user insight, and business outcomes into one shared direction.

Key takeaways:

Slow down to move faster. Taking time to understand the problem early prevents wasted effort later.
Lead with user stories. Real human insight has the power to shift leadership conversations and drive alignment.
Use discovery as a bridge. Continuous discovery isn’t just a research method—it’s a way to unite teams around purpose and impact.

Ultimately, this work reminded me why I love designing for FamilySearch — aligning purpose, people, and product to help members make meaningful connections.

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