Cassandra Lim – Product Designer

Valtech Digital | StarHub

Redesigning the digital experience

at StarHub

Role

Senior UX Designer

Collaborators

Design team of 4

StarHub Product Owners

Business Analysts

StarHub Engineers

Timeline

January 2026 – Present

6 months

BACKGROUND

People open a telco app to do a chore, then leave.

StarHub (one of Singapore's largest telcos, with ~2.2M subscribers) asked Valtech to modernise its app and web shop. But the real problem ran deeper than StarHub: the whole telco category is built for admin. You open the app to pay a bill or check usage, then close it. A monthly chore, not a daily habit.

Customers' expectations aren't set by other telcos anymore, they're set by Grab, DBS, and Apple: apps that feel personal, anticipatory, effortless. That's the real benchmark. And buying a phone or plan, confusing, jargon-heavy, transactional, sat the furthest from it.

The goal:

Turn a transaction tool into a destination, effortless, reassuring, and worth coming back to.

Turn a transaction tool into a destination, effortless, reassuring, and worth coming
back to.

IF YOU LINE THEM UP, YOU COULDN'T TELL THEM APART.

IF YOU LINE THEM UP, YOU COULDN'T
TELL THEM APART.

DISCOVERY & INSIGHTS

A good deal is a sum, not a sticker price.

Drawn from customer interviews, competitor analysis, and a 328-page content audit (a systematic review of how clear and consistent every page is).

Key Findings:

Real cost is mental math.

Customers calculate (phone ÷ 24 months) + monthly plan + vouchers themselves, so the real price is hidden until they do
the work.

Don't overwhelm me.

They were drowning in promos and jargon; they wanted the benefit first, detail on demand.

Offers live in the wrong place.

Deals arrive by email, then customers hunt for a promo code to paste at checkout, the value is disconnected from the moment
of buying.

Deals arrive by email, then customers hunt for a promo code
to paste at checkout, the value is disconnected from the moment
of buying.

You're not competing with telcos.

You're not competing
with telcos.

The benchmark is the last great app they used, not the other carrier.

VISION

From a telco utility you have to open → to a lifestyle app that already knows what you need.

From a telco utility you have to open →
to a lifestyle app that already knows what you need.

Stop designing for transactions. Design for people. Instead of a shop full of products and fine print, surface the right offer and your real price, with no hidden costs and no contract. Less functional, more personal. The buy journey is where this gets tested hardest, because buying is where confusion, jargon, and hidden costs all live.

FROM TRANSACTIONAL TO A PERSONALISED EXPERIENCE.

SOLUTION | THE BUY JOURNEY

What if buying a phone worked like getting an insurance quote?

What if buying a phone worked like
getting an insurance quote?

A buy journey built around a calculator, not a catalogue. Instead of browsing products, hunting for promo codes, and doing the maths yourself, the journey already knows you on log-in and instantly consolidates every relevant offer into one place, showing your real, personalised price up front. Like an insurance quote, the complexity happens behind the scenes; the customer just sees the answer that's true for them.

SOLUTION | PERSONALISATION

The app should already know what each customer needs.

Beyond buying, the home and shop homepage stop being a static menu and start adapting to the person. Two ways:

The right moment, surfaced at the right time.

The home greets each customer with what's timely and personal. "Your broadband order is on its way," a payment due soon, a device launch worth knowing about, or an offer picked for them. Contextual to their profile, shown when it counts, not buried in a menu.

Savings you didn't know you had.

Most customers have no idea what they're leaving on the table. Already have broadband? The shop surfaces a mobile plan you can bundle for less — and the same goes across entertainment, broadband, and mobile. Add more lines, save more. The app finds the savings and shows them to you, then carries that bundled price straight into the buy journey.

Throughout, the tone stays conversational and plain-spoken. Bold, Playful, Human. So "personal" never tips into "pushy."

STRATEGY

Life-centric, not plan-centric.

Design around moments, not modules.

Start from a customer's real situation, not the product menu.

Design around moments,
not modules.

Start from a customer's real situation, not the product menu.

Do the maths for them.

Surface one personalised, transparent total, no codes, no hidden costs, no contract.

Surface one personalised, transparent total,
no codes, no hidden costs, no contract.

Bring the offer to the moment.

The right deal appears where the customer already is, not in a separate inbox.

IMPACT

A live project, measured against a
clear bar.

A live project, measured against
a clear bar.

The redesign is in active development, so final numbers aren't in yet. It's built to lift conversion and personalisation, and to move StarHub's three-year digital targets.

The redesign is in active development, so final numbers aren't in yet. It's built to lift conversion and personalisation, and to move StarHub's three-year digital targets.
AI has unlocked unprecedented possibilities within a single tool, requiring a rethink of traditional UI paradigms. Interfaces will become more dynamic and adaptive,
shifting with user intent and context to maintain clarity, focus, and flow throughout the workflow.

Targets for the next 3 years:

65%

of sales happening digitally

50%

of renewals completed in-app

65%

customer satisfaction (CSAT) score

What I delivered:

The calculator-driven buy journey now used as the build reference, the personalised home/shop moments, the bundle-savings surfacing, the transparent price model, and business-logic edge cases resolved before development.