Buildertrend
Signatures Experience
Challenge
Rebuild Buildertrend’s signature experience so builders can confidently send, sign, and rely on legally binding documents across critical workflows - without introducing risk, ambiguity, or downstream issues.
Solution
Design and deliver a modern, scalable signature system that prioritizes trust, accuracy, and consistency across documents.
The result was a reliable, auditable, and intuitive signing experience that builders could trust, now used across multiple core workflows and designed for all device sizes.
Methodology
• Systems thinking
• Customer advisory board
• Pilot group rollout
• Prototyping
• Wireframing
• Usability Testing
Tools
• Sketchpad & Pen
• Figma
• Databricks
• Mixpanel
• Chameleon
• EnjoyHQ
Client deliverables
• Mobile responsive modern signature experience with version history
• New signature design pattern used on:
Purchase Orders
Proposals
Change Orders
About Buildertrend
Buildertrend is the leading residential construction management platform. Since 2006, we’ve empowered contractors to take control of projects and bring efficiency, organization and seamless communication to every aspect of their businesses. Builders can stay on top of costs, supplies, staff and more in one convenient place – and take on more projects without adding paperwork and stress. For over 1 million users across 100 countries, Buildertrend has made it easy to run successful projects and deliver a five-star experience to homeowners.
Users
Primary user:
Residential general contractors ($1M+ annual revenue)
Secondary users:
Clients of general contractors (homeowners, property owners, etc.)
Subcontractors and vendors
Project impact at a glance
44% increase week over week of builders using the new experience
35% increase week over week of signature field placement
53% increase overall of signature request creations
These gains came despite the legacy system having no historical adoption tracking or user event tracking, making post-launch usage an extremely strong net-new signal of success.
Overview
Signatures represent one of the highest-risk moments in the construction lifecycle: legal commitment, financial authorization, and customer trust converge in a single action.
At Buildertrend, the existing signature experience became fragmented, outdated, and difficult to use, introducing risk where there should have been confidence.
I led the redesign and rebuild of a signatures experience (along with new annotation functionality, file viewer, and version history), that established a modern, scalable experience that is being implemented on all features in the product that have signatures functionality.
The problem
Before this work, signatures were risky and unreliable:
The “Sign” and “Signature request” workflows were non-intuitive and left builders and their clients frustrated
There was no clear audit trail or signing history
Builders had no control over where signatures were placed
Outdated third-party tooling encouraged inconsistent signing practices
As a result, builders lacked confidence that signed documents were accurate, trustworthy, or defensible.
You can see an overview of the old experience outlined here.
Hypothesis
Our hypothesis is that by providing a new signature experience to new users, we will see an increase in both signature requests and usage increase by 10% compared to requests prior to release. Additionally, we will scale this experience across features to ensure a simple and streamlined solution for builders to use and trust to be accurate.
Constraints and complexity
This work required far more than functionality and UI improvements.
Signatures were being done via a legacy third-party tool (Atalasoft), which lacked flexibility, auditability, and modern platform support. To unlock meaningful improvement, we had to migrate to an entirely new integration (Nutrient) and rebuild the document viewer and UX along the way.
Our team planned the work in small slices, allowing us to deliver value quickly, often, and iterate fast from feedback.
Work phases:
Introduce a new modern file viewer
Add version history and document state clarity
Migrate years of historical annotations in groups, ensuring data migration was accurate and complete
Design, build, and test a fully responsive experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile
Implement a new signature experience, providing controlled signature field placement for builders
Design strategy
Above all, I wanted builders to feel that signing a document was trustworthy, easy, and accurate. If a document was signed, there should be no ambiguity, either in the moment or after signing.
Rather than focusing on signatures as an isolated interaction, I treated them as part of a larger document trust system that emphasized:
Clear understanding on where and how signatures can be captured
Strong auditability and a clear version history for documents
Consistent patterns that are reusable across document types
Designing for downstream workflows (e.g., attaching a signed document to another item in the product)
This ensured signatures became a reliable foundation instead of a fragile endpoint.
Overview of the new signature request and signing experience on files in Buildertrend
“This is very easy to use, I really like that! Love this and I really love Buildertend, it is getting so good!”
-Project Manager, KBF by Audi Contractors
““This is a no-brainer. Compared to what we’re doing in DocuSign, this is easy and it’s all in Buildertrend.
I’m excited, once you get this rolled out, we’re ready to do a press release.”
- Owner, AFT Construction
Key decisions
System-first over speed: We delayed surface-level UI improvements until the platform could support them correctly (e.g., signature fields)
Phased delivery: Risk was reduced incrementally with our roll out strategy rather than through a single major update
Pattern over single point solution: Signature interactions were designed to be simple, intuitive, and scalable across the product
The most impactful release introduced controlled signature field placement, vastly improving accuracy and confidence, made possible by the work before it (like version history and a new file viewer to do this in).
Outcome and impact
We validated success through layered signal:
Early adopters and a Customer Advisory Board provided real-time feedback
Gradual releases showed steady engagement growth rather than novelty spikes
Post-release metrics shows strong increase of use and adoption of functionality
While the legacy signatures experience adoption couldn’t be measured due to constraints on tracking the third party tool events, we paid close attention to post-launch engagement to ensure the experience was valuable and showing an increase in adoption.
This work established the core signature design pattern now used across:
Purchase Orders
Proposals
Change Orders
It created consistency for customers, reduced future platform risk, and simplified ongoing development.
Additionally I also:
Led customer education and facilitated live customer training on the new experience
Created and shared the design foundation and pattern to the product division as the pattern was implemented across the product
Ensured our team shipped quickly but responsibly, and as early as possible, despite significant complexity with a new tool and sunsetting legacy tools
How I design
This project reflects how I lead design in complex, integrated systems:
I focus on trust, risk reduction, and long-term integrity
I design patterns that scale across products and also collaborate with other teams involved to scale quickly and with quality
I ensure to balance building the right thing, speed of delivery, while also validating and iterating on released updates
Signatures may be small in surface area, but they carry a big responsibility for builders. Treating them as a single source of truth, rather than a feature or afterthought, made all the difference.