A Revenue-Driving Program for Staples Business Advantage
The Total Coffee dashboard
TLDR;
I led the design and launch of Total Coffee — a new revenue program on Staples Business Advantage, a platform serving over 1 million users weekly. By developing a high-potential junior designer and guiding her through every phase of the project, I delivered a program that now serves 90K+ customers and contributes to $500M+ in annual revenue.
90K+
Customers
$500M+
Annual Revenue
Situation
Staples ran a two-year Rotational Program for recent college graduates, giving them exposure across departments. I identified one graduate with exceptional UX potential and made a deliberate decision to assign her to lead a significant new initiative — Total Coffee, a program offering customers free leased coffee machines and supplies in exchange for a quarterly spending commitment on Staples Business Advantage.
Coaching a high-potential designer through her first customer interview.
Task
My mandate was twofold: deliver a tool that allowed customers to sign up for and manage their Total Coffee programs, and use the project as a vehicle to develop a high-potential designer through the full end-to-end design process — from gathering business and technical requirements, through design and validation, to stakeholder presentation. Throughout, I coached her on the leadership skills that matter as much as craft: maintaining momentum, knowing when to push back, and bringing others along with a collaborative UX vision.
I also used the project's pitch deck as a teaching opportunity — heavily editing and shaping the content to show the designer how to frame work effectively for stakeholders and cross-functional partners. She then presented it herself, building the business communication skills that are as essential to a designer's growth as craft.
From the pitch deck I shaped to model effective stakeholder communication
Activities
Distill Business, Product & Engineering Requirements
I brought UX into this program from day one — a deliberate choice to ensure design had a seat at the table before requirements were locked. Together, the designer and I met with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to define scope, and I used these sessions to model my approach to asking clarifying questions and navigating ambiguity.
Her computer science background proved valuable here — she was able to engage directly with engineering requirements, including installation services and API connections, in ways that accelerated the team's understanding and kept the work moving.
Below are examples of the requirements we gathered and analyzed to build our design specifications.
A sample of the product roadmap informing our design priorities
Engineering technical diagrams we used to understand the platform's constraints
The sales process to intake customers
I directed the designer to immerse herself in competitive analysis materials produced by our User Research team — using the landscape as a lens to identify where Total Coffee could genuinely differentiate. Understanding the competition isn't just research housekeeping; it's how you build a design rationale that holds up in stakeholder conversations.
Competitive analysis used to identify differentiation opportunities for Total Coffee
As the project gained visibility across the organization, new business requirements continued to emerge. Rather than treating this as a problem, I coached the designer to see it as an inevitable feature of high-stakes projects — and focused her on what she could control: how to respond thoughtfully, when to push back, and how to negotiate scope without losing momentum
One such requirement was integrating AutoRestock — Staples' automated replenishment program — into the Total Coffee workflow, designed to encourage recurring purchasing while ensuring customers met their financial commitments.
Integrating evolving business requirements without losing design integrity
Leading Team Brainstorms
A brainstorm she led tackling the setup and maintenance experience for phase two of Total Coffee
Working through the right customer authorization and management flow for Total Coffee within an organization
Reviewing Work
I built a rigorous review cadence into the project from the start — integrating the designer's work into our weekly peer-led design review sessions while also holding regular one-on-one reviews with her directly. This dual structure gave her both broad team feedback and targeted coaching.
One example: early in the project we worked through how to handle empty states — what users see when they first enroll in Total Coffee and have no data yet. Getting these moments right is critical to first impressions, and I used sessions like this to teach her how to think through edge cases systematically.
Reviewing approaches to empty states — designing for the critical first moments of a new customer's experience
As we approached launch, I guided the designer in organizing user acceptance testing sessions to validate that the live product matched our design intentions. I also coached her on how to document and communicate findings in a way the broader team could act on — translating raw testing results into a structured format accessible to stakeholders across product, engineering, and business.
Internal UX bug bash results ahead of launch
Total Coffee launched in the summer of 2024 and has grown consistently since. More than 50,000 coffee machines have been installed with customers, and Staples has since secured a landmark deal with a major financial services firm — further validating the program's market fit and revenue potential.
Beyond the business results, the designer grew into a confident, capable UX professional — able to handle complex projects, navigate shifting requirements, and deliver high-quality work under real business pressure. Developing that kind of talent while shipping a program at this scale is exactly the kind of leadership I bring to every team.
Further phases of Total Coffee are currently underway.
Total Coffee's current landing page and dashboard — with further phases underway