Overview

Formstack - Advanced PDF Exports

Formstack makes it easy to build custom forms without code. But once data is collected, customizing the exported documents often required advanced technical skills and third-party tools.

As the sole product designer on a cross-functional team, I led the design process from start to finish.

Impact

Advanced PDF made it much easier for users to create custom document exports, improving efficiency and supporting enterprise needs. It also raised customer satisfaction and was the first feature released using our updated design system.

Role

UX Designer
UX Researcher

Team

Back-end Developer
Back-end Developer
Front-end Developer
Product Manager
QA Analyst

Deliverables

Competitive Analysis
Product Design
Requirements
Stakeholder Interviews
Survey Design
User Research
User Testing
UX Microcopy

Problem Statement

How can we increase customization for PDF exports while maintaining the ease of use of the form builder?

The submitted page looks horrible. The exported PDF file looks even worse. I can’t believe it is not possible to even see my logo in the submitted forms. There should be a way to make it look decent. I can’t just print and hand a boring PDF to a customer.

– An enterprise customer

Research

Process

1. Searched our ideas site for feature requests related to PDFs and created an affinity diagram to discover underlying themes and create questions for stakeholder and user interviews.
2. Interviewed six stakeholders from Customer Experience, Sales, and the Product team.
3. Collaborated with my Product Manager to conduct 23 user interviews in two weeks. The users interviewed had voted on PDF features, been referred by Customer Support or Success, or replied to my in-app survey.
4. Investigated the pdf export functionality and pricing at eight competitors.
   
5. Created a list of user stories and colllaborated with the product manager and lead developer to triage user stories into what we could tackle in 3 releases.  

Fun Fact:

By using psychology, nudge techniques, and personalizing each email, I achieved a 100% response rate to my email invitations for user interviews. One participant, who was on vacation during our interview period, insisted on speaking with us the week he returned.
 

Research

Findings

My research showed that the feature should focus on:

Control
Customers can customize the fields that appear in the export and can add a logo to their export.

Style
The overall style of the export looks professional and modern with more efficient use of space, better page breaks, and maintains the information hierarchy of the form.

Integration
All fields are available to integrations making it easier for customers to set up since there is 1:1 parity. 

Challenges

Designing Under Constraints

This project introduced two key challenges. It was the first to launch with our new design system, and just days before handoff, we added feature gating—limiting full customization to certain subscription tiers. Previously, all export features were available to all users. This change required close coordination with engineering and design to create and implement a new pattern.

Design

Final Design – Settings

I applied familiar, user-friendly patterns from other settings pages, including:

• Just-in-time help: Added direct links to relevant help articles instead of the general knowledge base.
• Progressive disclosure: Revealed settings step by step to reduce overwhelm.
• Copy previous settings: To save time, users can reuse settings from their last 5 exports—limited due to memory constraints.

Design

Final Design – PDF

I focused on two key areas:

• Better scannability: Increased white space and kept the original form’s information hierarchy to make exports easier to read.
• Simplified process: Made metadata fields optional and ensured all fields were available via API, reducing manual work after export.

Outcome

Learnings

Adapting to change: This project faced two major last-minute shifts: adding feature gating and switching to a new design system. Staying flexible helped me meet the deadline without compromising quality.

Using a new design system: This was the first project built with our updated design system. It highlighted the value of strong collaboration between design and front-end teams, as well as clear documentation. As the first designer to use it, I expanded the documentation to support future projects.

Balancing needs and goals: Introducing tiered access to customization features helped meet business goals while still supporting a positive user experience.

Outcome

Customer Feedback

Positive Feedback: Out of 23 interviewees, three sent personalized emails expressing excitement about workflow enhancements.
One customer reported reducing their process steps from ten to
three.

Subscription Concerns: Two interviewees praised the updates but were disappointed they couldn't use them due to their lower tier subscription plans.

Post-Launch Sentiment: Two weeks after launch, customer
support tickets and the ideas forum showed overwhelmingly positive feedback. A few customers were unhappy about updating workflows built around the old PDF style.

Outcome

Impact

This project and my 3-month research on Formstack's enterprise readiness contributed to the acquisition of WebMerge and the launch of Formstack Documents.

During PDF user interviews, I found that many customers used WebMerge for the two most requested features we couldn't achieve without an infrastructure overhaul:

• Printing a blank form identical to the online form, providing a single source of truth.
• Exporting a PDF with data that matched the digital form's appearance.