Discover below how solving "blank canvas syndrome" increased key metrics and made million-dollar decisions accessible.
2021–2025
Founding designer
B2B SaaS
Startup
Process Intelligence
15 mins
Operational executives control million-dollar optimization decisions but can't use complex simulation tools like AnyLogic to predict outcomes, measure ROI, or make faster decisions that drive efficiency.
The team and I transformed our simulation engine into an intuitive whiteboard UI, making advanced "what if" analysis accessible to business users. They can now experiment independently.
How does this change daily work for regular employees? Cutting process inefficiencies doesn't just free up time—it lets healthcare workers spend more time with patients or factory workers focus on safety protocols. This literally saves lives.
Operational executives at companies across North America, including Fortune 100, use VSOptima to save millions on process optimization.
Enterprise processes are getting more complex. 65% of managers say decisions are harder than two years ago (Gartner). Existing solutions create spaghetti-like maps that confuse more than clarify.
Two tools currently dominate how operational executives find bottlenecks—but neither delivers what they actually need:
— Error-prone calculations
— No simulation capability
— Poor visualization
— Can't test "what-if" scenarios
But wait, what about industry leaders? Meet AnyLogic: it can simulate ANYthing, even entire cities, but requires a PhD and coding skills.
What if you could find the sweet spot between Miro's intuitive canvas, MS Excel's universality and AnyLogic's simulation power, without the brick wall of PhD or coding requirements?
That gap became our opportunity: accessible process simulation that business users actually want to use.
Viktor is a Chief Operating Officer managing the full complexity
of e-commerce operations. He makes million-dollar optimization decisions but lacks the technical resources to validate them.
These challenges generated many hypotheses. Rather than detail how we framed, categorized, and prioritized them, I'll focus on just one. It’s self-explanatory, engaging, and impactful to MRR, ARR.
VSOptima creates a digital twin of operational processes. Business users follow five steps:
The problem? Users got stuck at step one. They didn't have time to learn the system, so churned.
What is OMTM? Every lean startup focuses on One Metric That Matters. For VSOptima, that metric was simulations per user per month. Everything we built aimed to increase this number.
#1 REGULAR ONBOARDING.
The obvious, cheap experiment: add standard onboarding.
Experiment failed.
Tests showed users still struggled with the same issue.
#2 SELF-EXPLORATORY TOOL.
We needed deeper research. I facilitated workshops with another designer where we brainstormed using IDEO method, studied competitors, categorized opportunities, then narrowed to three directions using the UK Design Council's double diamond model.
We prioritized using NN/g's impact-effort matrix, focusing on feasibility given our lean startup constraints.
Next, we explored all three solutions, tested internally, and iterated based on feedback.
The winner? "Self-exploratory tool." We used VSOptima itself to teach users how to run their first simulation.
We also simplified the validation requirements, removing obstacles blocking flow completion.
Experiment succeeded.
Both activation rate and OMTM increased. New users now see this guided model on first login.
Further developing the "blank canvas syndrome" hypothesis.
We simplified the path to first simulation, but learning new tools remains challenging. So we asked: Could AI Copilot replace onboarding entirely? This led us to a new custdev round.
What you just skimmed through in minutes represents one hypothesis test among dozens that took us years to validate. Here are the key research methods that shaped VSOptima's evolution.
INTERVIEWING & PERSONAS
We created and continuously update personas based on extensive interviews. While client organizations vary in size and industry, we focus on 3 core roles.
Impact: Clarified market positioning and identified key user pain points.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING
(our product)
Tracking how clients experience VSOptima revealed friction points and opportunities we'd missed.
Impact: Proved the "blank canvas syndrome" and uncovered other issues.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING
(competitive products)
Analyzing competitor UX revealed what we were missing.
Impact: A second designer's research identified a critical missing feature. Problem interviews confirmed demand, so we built it.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I regularly analyzed market players to make switching to VSOptima seamless, studying their applications, websites, positioning, and industry reports.
Impact: Informed product decisions and reduced migration barriers.
For the past year or so, I have been using vsoptima for value stream mapping and simulation of up to one year of flow in a number of contexts and business domains for various clients.
I managed to forecast flow blockages (in advance of Kanban boards that end up showing the same information months later) in fast-moving consumer goods, travel, and digital business domains.
The beauty of this tool is one doesn't need to know one's value stream to start. I would go so far as to say one could use this tool for work system topologies in flight levels and simulate flow through multiple levels, as the tool is flexible.
Agility chef/strategist
Value streams and managing flow seem to be finally gaining momentum as ways to understand and mitigate delivery risks in knowledge work.
It's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for ways to explore how workflow changes are likely to play out over time without having to wait all those days to see!!! I especially like that they've gone to great lengths to model in variability and a bit of randomness, since real life is anything but linear.
Enterprise Coach & Principal
Operational executives at companies across North America, including Fortune 100, use VSOptima to save millions on process optimization.
No one builds alone. Thank you to everyone whose expertise, lessons, and support made this possible:
Pavel Azaletskiy, CEO and Founder
Noel Navarro, CFO
Viktoria Karalionak, CMO
Sergey Kokorin, CTO
Arsenii Skibitskii, Frontend Engineer
Alexey Chernov, Backend Engineer
Andriy Rudavskyy, QA Engineer
Andrei Varabyeu, DevOps
Sergei Pominov, Product Designer (joined and left mid-project)
Viktoria Karalionak, CMO
Arsenii Skibitskii, Frontend Engineer
Alexey Chernov, Backend Engineer
I can't ignore sharing one of the biggest impacts of design system adoption, especially tokens. Long story short: I managed to compress ~640 button states down to 39—that's 16x fewer variants. Results:
Easier maintenance and support
Simpler process for adding new states (and removing old ones)
Less memory usage = better Figma performance and fewer lags.
