Net-Terms Platform

2025

Nav is a company that specializes in helping small businesses improve their business credit score. Business credit scores are used by vendors when they are determining whether to extend an ongoing line of credit.

Hypothesis

By enabling small business vendors to easily offer net-terms with Nav managing the application and management, we enable b2b commerce in between small businesses, grow LTV for Nav Prime, and unlock a new monetization channel for supplied and b2b customers.

So there is a huge opportunity to create a vendor management platform for small business owners.

My role

Lead embedded designer, operating within a team of designers.
Rapidly intake, understand, and solve customer problems.
Defined product vision and the user problem space through early discovery and hypothesis framing.
Translated ambiguous ideas into clear product concepts, prototypes, and narratives that guided the team.

Discovery

First, I dove into the history of trade credit

The very first business directories were created by Dun & Bradstreet for looking up business credit. Enormous reference books would be sent out to companies on a quarterly basis with updated information.

The reference books can still be purchased today – and they are a masterclass in graphic design. Truly incredible.

Dun & Bradstreet reference book table of contents — This is a photocopy table of contents from on of the reference books. Originals were printed in blue ink, to prevent fraud.

Dun & Bradstreet business credit reference material — Business credit was once a part of our cultural fabric. It's how we maintained a high-trust culture in a modernizing world.

I also started some research on potential direct competitors, as well as indirect UI inspiration.

Some research on direct competitors
Some research on adjacent UI’s that I could generate ideas from

I'll show some somewhat embarrassing explorations

Constraints, & Goals

This project was extremely chaotic, which is where I thrive. The vendor marketplace was a true 0→1 product. Unlike business credit, which Nav had deep internal knowledge of, we knew very little about the world of trade credit.

Initial goals

Make $1 by the end of the month
Design the product so it's a couple weeks ahead of where the devs are
Vendor sign up rate

Eventual goals

Buyer application conversion rate
Approval rate of submitted applications
Repayment rate and delinquency rate over time
LTV of vendors

Figjam board — product strategy and MVP scope — Here's a Figjam to give a glimpse of the chaos. I partnered with PM and engineering to co-create product strategy and define MVP scope.

Exploration

Fortunately, a year prior, I established the initial design system, interaction patterns, and visual direction for long-term scalability at Nav. This was the perfect use-case.

Show the A, B, C options for the verification steps
Show thew A, B, C options for the decisioning steps

Design exploration — options and layouts

Shipped