GET /candidate/projects/breeze_intelligence_enrichment

{
  "title": "Bringing Clearbit's enrichment into HubSpot",
  "summary": "After HubSpot acquired Clearbit, I made its data enrichment feel native to the CRM, and it shipped on schedule at INBOUND '24 as part of Breeze Intelligence.",
  "details": {
    "company": "HubSpot, Breeze Intelligence (Data Enrichment)",
    "role": "Product Designer, then Senior Product Designer; UX lead and vision owner for Data Enrichment",
    "team": "[PM], the Clearbit product and engineering team, [N HubSpot engineers], Content Design",
    "stakeholders": "Fintech, Growth, CRM and Marketing Hub teams; a Design Director; the Buyer Intent team",
    "methods": "Discovery research, feature-priority research, competitive analysis, beta testing, cross-team alignment",
    "tools": "Figma, FigJam"
  },
  "overview": {
    "problem": "HubSpot needed Clearbit's enrichment inside the CRM by INBOUND '24, under a new usage-based pricing model. Brought over unchanged, Clearbit's concepts and terms would have felt foreign to HubSpot users.",
    "solution": "Set the enrichment vision in 2023, then built the in-CRM experience on familiar HubSpot patterns for tracking enrichment and spending credits, with one shared vocabulary across Breeze features. Aligned the Clearbit team and four partner organizations.",
    "impact": [
      "Shipped on schedule at INBOUND '24, one of HubSpot's top-priority launches that year",
      "Consistent patterns validated by beta user feedback",
      "[Add: adoption metric after launch]"
    ]
  },
  "context": {
    "business": "HubSpot acquired Clearbit to offer company and contact enrichment natively, as part of the Breeze AI launch at INBOUND '24. Enrichment came with usage-based credits, which touched billing, growth and every hub that uses CRM data.",
    "customer_problem": "CRM records were often incomplete or out of date, so sales and marketing teams spent time on manual research or paid for separate enrichment tools.",
    "design_problem": "Clearbit's concepts, terms and workflows would feel foreign to HubSpot users and clash with existing CRM patterns.",
    "evidence": "[Add: feature-priority research findings]",
    "problem_statement": "How might we bring Clearbit's enrichment into HubSpot so it feels native and easy to understand, despite a new pricing model and a hard launch date?"
  },
  "role": {
    "owned": "Research and discovery, the product and UX vision for Data Enrichment, and the end-to-end enrichment experience in the CRM.",
    "partnered_on": "Pricing and packaging with Fintech and Growth; the Breeze Intelligence and Growth journey; consistency with Buyer Intent; terminology with Content Design. Helped onboard the Clearbit team, new PMs and a Design Director, and helped hire the PM.",
    "constraints": [
      "Time: fixed public launch at INBOUND '24",
      "Organizational: an acquired team learning HubSpot; early churn; many teams with a stake in a new pricing model",
      "Platform: rigid limits on CRM and billing changes before launch",
      "Bandwidth: also the designer for Data Quality"
    ]
  },
  "process": {
    "discover_2023": "Owned research and discovery; ran feature-priority research to rank what customers needed most from enrichment.",
    "define_vision_2023": "Wrote the Data Enrichment vision and aligned related teams, including Sales and Prospecting. Reshaped the plan to keep frontend engineers unblocked.",
    "align_with_clearbit_2024": "Mapped Clearbit's concepts onto HubSpot ones; wrote a master terminology doc and a UX and content alignment doc.",
    "design_and_validate_2024": "Designed the in-CRM experience under tight timelines and tested the patterns with beta users before INBOUND."
  },
  "decisions": [
    { "decision": "How to bring in Clearbit's UX", "options": "Port as-is / rebuild on HubSpot patterns", "chose": "Reuse HubSpot components for tracking enrichment and spending credits, to match users' mental model and ship on time", "tradeoff": "Some Clearbit features and differentiators simplified or deferred" },
    { "decision": "Consistency across Breeze features", "options": "Per-team patterns / shared patterns", "chose": "Shared patterns with Buyer Intent and other Breeze features; confirmed by beta feedback", "tradeoff": "Negotiating with several teams on their own timelines" },
    { "decision": "Terminology", "options": "Clearbit names / HubSpot language", "chose": "One master terminology doc built on HubSpot terms, aligned with Content Design", "tradeoff": "[Add: Clearbit terms kept and why]" }
  ],
  "buy_in": "Used research and competitive insights to inform cross-team decisions; owned the key conversations and made sure every team understood the outcome.",
  "solution": [
    "Enrichment where users already work: company and contact records fill in automatically in the CRM",
    "Familiar patterns for tracking and spending credits, built from existing HubSpot components",
    "One language across Breeze: shared terms and patterns with Buyer Intent and other Breeze Intelligence features"
  ],
  "impact": {
    "metrics": [
      "Launch: shipped at INBOUND '24 on schedule",
      "Pattern consistency: confirmed by beta user feedback",
      "Teams aligned: Fintech, Growth, CRM and Marketing Hub, plus the Clearbit team",
      "Adoption: [Add: portals using enrichment, records enriched, or credits spent]"
    ],
    "quote": "Manager called the contribution to the Breeze Intelligence vision \"invaluable\" and credited it with helping the Clearbit team deliver within HubSpot."
  },
  "reflection": {
    "do_differently": "Hand off work earlier; recruiting someone to take over Data Quality was one of the most valuable contributions.",
    "learned": "When integrating an acquired product, a shared vocabulary does more for alignment than polished screens.",
    "next": "Handed Breeze Intelligence off and became UX DRI for Data Studio; enrichment and credit patterns carried into Smart Columns and credit transparency work."
  }
}