Ryan CoughlinMainer, designer, and fly fishing fanatic
The classic editor on the top row, with unlabeled canvas icons and a floating panel covering the guide, and the new editor on the bottom row, with tools listed by name in one Inspector and the guide in view.

One Inspector for every tool

Every edit at Reprise now happens in the editor I designed, with 3.4× fewer frustrated clicks than the one it replaced.

Type
Design Delivery
My Role
Principal Designer
Year
Dec 2025 - Oct 2026

Enterprise sales engineers build Product Tours in Reprise's editor: guides, click actions, variables and objects. I first moved the old editor onto our design system, then designed the new editor's authoring model around one Inspector.

Engineering built the new editor's engine. I designed and shipped its authoring experience.

THE RESULTS

Every edit now happens in the new editor

100% of edits since the classic editor retired on Oct 21

  • Up from about 65% in early September.
  • 3.4× fewer frustration signals (dead and rage clicks) per action than the classic editor.
  • Find & Replace now changes every match, so a prospect's tour no longer shows the previous company's name.
  • Reprise now builds and supports one editor, not two.

THE PROBLEM

Every tool opened its own floating panel over the canvas

  • Each panel was built differently, and clicking away from one threw away what you had typed.
  • Find & Replace changed only the first match, so a prospect's tour could still show the previous company's name.
  • Variables had no list, and deleting one made the elements bound to it disappear.
  • Guide bubbles blocked clicks, so authors deleted a guide just to edit what was underneath.
  • The first version of the new editor floated tools over the canvas too.

WHAT I DECIDED

One panel that stays put

  • One Inspector. Click anything and it shows every tool for that element. Select nothing and it shows the screen.
  • Weight follows use. Tools are grouped Behavior, Appearance, Advanced, so how often a tool is used sets how prominent it is.
  • Where you start says what you want. Start on an element and you get a guide attached to it. Start in the screen list and you get a floating one.
  • If it affects the sequence, it's a step. A delay set on the gap between screens became Timed Advance, a step in the flow.
  • Fix the system, not the 49th place. One shared panel row replaced 48 hand-built rows.
  • What you pick is what you see. Seven of nine position dots used to put the guide somewhere else. One placement rule now, with a visual picker.
Three views of the Inspector: the screen with counts of guides, actions and variables, an element with Behavior, Appearance and Advanced groups, and a guide's Location tab with a nine-position picker. Below, a new variable form and the position picker up close.

The Inspector with nothing selected, an element selected, and the guide's location picker.

Close-ups of single editor controls: the Screen Flow rail with an Add step menu, the Add to an element menu, a device frame list, a theme list, a Discard unsaved changes prompt and the editor's Agent welcome.

The details follow the same rules: the Screen Flow rail, Add menus, device frames, themes and the unsaved-work prompt.

SHIPPING IT

Switching enterprise customers without breaking their tours

  • A staff-only beta first, then both editors side by side during the move.
  • A visible way back to the classic editor, shown only to customers who joined before launch.
  • A parity audit of 110 capabilities in August: 95 at full parity, the rest tracked to a list.
  • When one release hid the way back for everyone, the fix shipped about 19 hours later.

THE PATH

We changed course as customers taught us

  • We removed the editor's canvas menu for one Inspector, then brought it back two days later, wired to it.
  • In July two customers hit gaps (no typewriter effect, missing actions), and one escalated before a conference. We closed both by mid-August.
  • When nearly every client company had already edited in the new editor, I made the case to switch everyone. Leadership agreed that day, and the classic editor was gone a week later.