SMS composition

My role on this project

Owner: All UX & Design assets & decision, prototypes, design thinking, and competitive analysis
Partner: Problem definition and scope with Engineering & Product Manager

Overview

Drip’s SMS creation experience had inconsistent UI patterns, cluttered layouts, and dated interactions which made composing messages feel awkward and unreliable. This project focused on raising the baseline—refining design, improving usability, and creating visual and behavioral consistency with Drip’s broader product ecosystem.

Experince goals

Promote clarity and simplify an outdated patchwork experience. The SMS builder had become visually dense and inconsistent; the goal was to reduce noise, lower cognitive load, and make message creation feel faster, clearer, and more aligned with the rest of Drip.

Existing experience, with a host of issues:

Problem

The existing editor suffered from layered design debt: mismatched components, poor hierarchy, and unclear affordances. Optional features like image and emoji insertion were visually prioritized over core editing actions, and small usability gaps—like inconsistent line breaks—disrupted flow. Together, these issues made the SMS tool feel half-finished and untrustworthy.

  
  Improvements at a Glance
  
        Area
        Before
        After
      
        Copy & Tone
        Inconsistent, overly technical language
        Clear, concise copy aligned with Drip’s product voice
      
        Layout & Structure
        Cluttered hierarchy and dated visuals; building process began with audience selection, interrupting natural flow
        Simplified stepper with clear status indicators and reoriented flow—message creation first, audience selection second
      
        Editing Experience
        Unpredictable text input and line breaks
        Updated editor aligned with familiar, industry-standard behavior
      
        Character Count
        Confusing, inaccurate messaging
        Accurate, dynamic counter with clear cost estimate
      
        Media Insertion
        Separate, inconsistent workflows for images and personalization
        Unified, streamlined approach for inserting media and personalization
      
        Image Handling
        Limited feedback and unclear actions
        Clear image details, inline editing controls, and better labeling
      
        Optional settings
        Buried or inconsistent
        Reorganized options for visibility and logical hierarchy
      
        Preview
        Overly detailed, visually noisy
        Simplified preview aligned with real SMS rendering

Design Approach

The goal was to make it feel cohesive, modern and useable.

Established visual and functional parity between Broadcast and Workflow SMS editors.
Simplified message composition by starting from a clean, blank slate.
Reorganized tool hierarchy, emphasizing message creation and character awareness over secondary options.
Updated emoji, personalization, and image tools to follow Drip’s design standards.

These refinements created a more predictable, cohesive experience that felt native to the product.

Collaboration and Delivery

Worked closely with product and engineering to identify feasible improvements within existing technical constraints. Scoped updates were prioritized for impact and speed, balancing design quality with delivery efficiency. Larger architectural issues were documented for later technical debt consideration.

Outcome

The redesigned SMS editor now feels cohesive, confident, and aligned with the rest of Drip.

Cleaner layout and reduced visual noise
Consistent UX patterns across SMS and Email tools
Improved readability, usability, and user trust