On the Pichet ESB scope, I had to equip roughly 80 daily interlocutors coming from 12 business directions (Finance, Accounting, HR, Marketing, Hospitality, Real Estate, Security, IT, etc.). These people were not technical users: they needed integration dashboards, flow visualisers, clear reporting tools - but with no deep technical training and a cognitive load already saturated by their day job.

I refused to dive directly into Symfony code. Before every screen, I produced a paper wireframe then a lightweight Figma version that I had validated in 30 minutes by the responsible department head, asking 3 questions: what are we trying to do (user intent), in what order (the journey), with what vocabulary (business language, not tech). Once the wireframe was approved, I moved on to the Symfony controllers and the Twig + jQuery integration, but the journey was locked. For the most sensitive financial flows, I also produced journey maps documented on Confluence.

Roughly 80 interlocutors adopted the tools with minimal training, average training time dropped from half a day to less than an hour, and the business directions later came back to the ESB team to scope 3 additional cross-functional tools without going through another evangelisation phase.

On this project I durably understood that a readable wireframe is worth 3 iterations of code. It is the reflex I now replay on every ACCENSEO engagement and on the accounting SaaS: sketch before opening Figma, validate the journey before the first line of React, and accept that a blank A4 sheet and 10 minutes are often worth more than 2 hours in Figma.

On the Fleurance Nature refit in 2017 at Smile, I had to redesign 3 storefronts (Fleurance Nature France, International, Mincifine) with a shared brand identity but different local codes. The graphic specifications went through 7 versions in 2 months as business edge cases surfaced (customer groups, multi-site promotions, category translations, review handling). On responsive, I had to hold mobile + tablet + desktop without multiplying themes.

I laid down a shared responsive grid (mobile-first, breakpoints calibrated against existing analytics) and a minimal UI kit that factored the critical visual components (categories, product sheets, checkout funnel, navigation). For every storefront, I produced responsive wireframes across 3 breakpoints, validated visual mock-ups iteratively with the customer, wrote the graphic specifications for the 3 distinct themes, and then owned the front-end implementation on Magento. The WordPress blog plugged in via RSS was aligned visually on the same grid.

3 coherent storefronts shipped to production across 8 environments, shared visual identity preserved without per-store rewrites, and the 58-day post-launch warranty handled in person without any major UX incident.

That UI/UX discipline is what now lets me push back on a poorly framed brief at ACCENSEO without depending on an external design agency. On the solo accounting SaaS I replayed the same mechanic to frame the experience for 6 distinct roles (Admin, Collaborator, Consultant, Accountant, Accounting, Banking) before the first line of code - and that is exactly what saved me the post-delivery iteration weeks that an unframed scope would have cost.