Dulux

Consumer and trade painter user experience redesign

Problem statement

Dulux Find a Painter launched in 2023, connecting consumers with accredited painters via a basic online form. While the initial launch was successful, the program had clear gaps: the matching algorithm was unreliable, the experience for both consumers and painters felt unfinished, and painter sign-up rates needed to grow.

The challenge was complexity. Dulux's three business units — house painting, roof restoration, and concrete resurfacing — each operate independently, with different painter networks spanning Australia and New Zealand. Any solution needed to serve all three.

My brief was to redesign end-to-end: improve matching, increase painter acquisition, and elevate the experience for both sides of the marketplace.

Design process

I inherited user research from a digital agency — prototype tests with consumers and interviews with painters — and used this as my foundation.

Discovery:
Working with a business analyst and marketing developer, I mapped current-state business rules, flows, and email templates in Confluence. I then ran stakeholder sessions across each business unit to surface gaps, before exploring future-state flows and information architecture in Miro.

Exploration:
After aligning stakeholders on the UX vision, I moved into low-fidelity exploration in Figma. Existing design systems for the consumer form and Trade Direct accelerated this phase significantly. A key insight here: a multi-step, image-based form would give consumers faster, clearer ways to communicate their painting needs — and give developers clean places to inject business logic.

Alignment:
To close out discovery, I ran consultation workshops with IT integration, offshore development, marketing, and business owners. Design artefacts I prepared — flow diagrams, screen exports, and prototypes — were used to secure executive sign-off and capital funding.

Build:
As the sole UX designer, I designed and handed over all screens, flows, states, and components across three platforms (consumer website, Dulux Trade App, Dulux Trade Web) in a three-week sprint cadence. I also QA'd each deployment against design specs, documenting all discrepancies.

Results

Launched June 2025 across all three Dulux business units. I delivered:

• 3 multi-step consumer form experiences
• A painter experience for Dulux Trade App
• A painter experience for Dulux Trade Web

Learnings

Working inside a large, multi-stakeholder business taught me a few things I'll carry forward:

• Complexity is a design constraint - Business rules shape user experience more than most designers expect — understanding them early is non-negotiable.
• Artefacts do political work - Reusable flows and prototypes gave leaders a shared language to navigate uncertainty and make decisions with confidence.
• Design systems are a strategic asset - Without them, this project's timeline wouldn't have been feasible.
• Change causes anxiety - Bringing stakeholders along through future-state thinking — not just presenting at the end — made a meaningful difference to buy-in.