Launching a marketplace for users to discover and compare programs for their land

Company

NCX

Project

Programs (2023- 2024)

Contributions

UX Design, Research, Visual Design, Content, GTM

Role

Design Lead

Industry

Climate, Finance

The roadmap was set, new features nearly ready to launch, and then everything changed. Carbon markets were facing increased scrutiny and skepticism, and like many startups face we needed to embrace a pivot. At NCX, I found myself leading both design and research efforts during a key pivot away from our carbon credit business model to something that the markets were signaling for.

Where did I start? By facilitating cross-functional research workshops to train the team on how to conduct research to identify product opportunities and market signals.

2
products lauched

300+
new sign ups over 30 days

50 programs added over 30 days, leading to real revenue

8% increase in conversion after A/B testing 3 concepts over 3 weeks

Research revealed something unexpected. While we’d been working on building a high quality carbon credit marketplace, landowners were struggling with a different problem — they couldn’t easily discover and compare other programs for their land to bring in extra income. “The carbon market is terrible. I’m looking for other ways to make revenue from my land.”, NCX Landowner Platform user.

Carbon credits was just one way to support landowners, but they had diverse land and needed diverse options. They wanted easy access to programs for their land that helped them generate income in ways other than cutting down their trees. “I’m not sure where to get started, my land is too small for a forester to work with and I haven’t found any programs that fit my goals.”, NCX Landowner Platform user.

“Thousands of landowners have used the marketplace, and hundreds have requested calls. Vic was instrumental in delivering our MVP and maturing it up.”  

- Chief Product Officer

“...Vic single-handedly led our in-house UX research lab for NCX employees to understand the value of research and to implement these practices into PMF.”  

- Landowner Success Manager

“Vic was a key contributor on PMF efforts, which led to real revenue in the pipeline. She has been critical in infusing good discovery practices into the sales motion, which has been cited multiple times by BizDev as a positive evolution.”

  - Chief Product Officer

After weeks of conducting research, supporting the team, and distilling findings into real insights to shape a product — I partnered with the Chief Product Officer and Head of Engineering on prioritizing the roadmap for a new product, and led the 0 to 1 design of a new type of marketplace to help landowners find unique programs across solar, regenerative agriculture, tree planting, hunting, and more.

The design challenge wasn't just about organizing information, it was about making complex land management decisions feel as intuitive as browsing for shoes online. Designing this new product experience became a constant balance of method and creative chaos: exploring big ideas during proof of concepting to figure out what had legs, refining through research, building interactive prototypes, and launching live AB experiments to determine which flows had the highest conversion.

Building something this complex meant my collaborators expanded beyond the usual Engineers and Product; I worked more closely with finance, data science, growth, and even took on deeper responsibilities in product management and go-to-market planning.

The aesthetic of the new platform draws inspiration from nature, grids, and the simplicity of e-commerce. Forest greens, clay, and charcoal colors grounded the platform and maintained consistency with our forested landowner target audience, while using imagery throughout the experience added a more human touch.

The original design system I established was for a carbon credit marketplace, and not for complex discovery, comparison, and selection of programs. Category filter chips let users narrow down dozens of programs, while prominent card images and scannable titles made the difference between scrolling past a program and actually reading it. But getting users to that browsing experience required its own strategy, a streamlined onboarding with just enough context about how it worked, plus newly added single sign-on, made it easy to get started.

After launch, metrics showed adoption from both users and businesses (program partners), and this sticky product experience generated more referrals than the previous business model. The new Landowner Platform empowered landowners to discover, evaluate, and compare opportunities beyond carbon credits in one place.

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