My Journey Designing Blackline at Adhoc Studio
Redesigning Blackline, a real estate CRM at Adhoc Studio.
I left Connect2crypto and walked straight into a completely different kind of company.
Connect2crypto was a fast moving startup where I wore multiple hats and made decisions quickly. Adhoc Studio had been running 10+ years, had real paying clients, and moved at a much more relaxed pace. New problems, new pace, new muscle to build.
The beginning
Adhoc Studio began as a rendering service for real estate developers in Toronto about 10+ years ago. Blackline, the CRM I was hired to redesign, came later, a byproduct that had quietly grown into the main product over five years.
Here's how it got built: a client asked for a feature, they built it. The next client asked for something else, they built that too. Five years of that, one client request at a time.
What came out the other end was a CRM that could do everything any client would ever ask for, and was also a complete mess. Features stacked on features nobody had gone back to simplify. Flows so tangled you needed a map. The backend matched the front end, tangled in its own way, which is exactly why the ask wasn't "make it prettier." It was rebuild the thing, top to bottom.
That was my job.
A bit more about the beginning
At Connect2crypto I'd learned research comes first, always. That was the rule I walked in with.
At Adhoc Studio the rule broke on contact. There was too much basic stuff broken to justify weeks of research before touching anything. The app wasn't following the basics yet.
So the actual plan became: get it functional first, then go back and research the specific flows once there was a foundation worth researching on. I was also the only designer on a CRM this size, which meant even wanting to research everything wouldn't have been possible. I adapted.
The middle
Phase one was untangling every flow that didn't make sense, not making anything beautiful, just making it work the way a person would expect.
While I did that, I built a design system on the side, not for a team this time, just reusable pieces I could lean on for the rest of the rebuild. The whole goal of V2 was function over polish: fix the information architecture, fix the flows, get the structure right.
It wasn't pretty when it shipped. It worked a lot better than what came before it.
The middle, where it feels kinda good
About six months ago V3 started, and this is where the work changed shape.
Because the design system already existed from V2, I wasn't starting from zero. I could spend the time on what I actually do best: testing with real users, refining the UI, digging into the details that only show up once the basics are solid. All that unglamorous V2 groundwork was finally paying rent.
This is where I'm sitting now, research-driven, detail-focused work, and only because the foundation underneath it holds.
The middle, where you look back and reflect
When I first heard we weren't starting with research, it felt wrong. Everything Connect2crypto had taught me said research goes first.
Working B2B taught me the exception. At Connect2crypto we were building something new, with investors funding the runway to research properly. At Adhoc Studio I inherited 10+ years of real users and paying clients who needed things fixed now.
Different constraints mean a different order of operations, and that's not a compromise, it's just reading the room correctly.
Design isn't running the same playbook on every project. It's knowing which playbook the situation actually calls for, and building the thing that works for the constraints you actually have, not the ones you wish you had.
To be continued...
I'm still at Adhoc Studio, still on V3, still doing the research-heavy work I like, on a foundation that finally makes sense because I fixed it in that order on purpose.
