The research phase opened with a structured stakeholder interview with Purple Unity's CEO, covering background, goals, challenges, and success metrics. It revealed three priorities that shaped everything that followed: scalability above all else, a brand that communicated innovation and environmental responsibility without becoming too abstract, and a design system modular enough to onboard enterprise clients without requiring rework every time a new feature shipped. A service design blueprint mapped the full customer journey across four stages — from first awareness through to post-delivery feedback — and exposed onboarding as the highest-stakes moment in the entire experience, sitting at the intersection of the most customer actions, the longest time investment, and the most backend complexity. A Kano model analysis across 20 features then drew a clear line between what Purple Unity had to ship and what would define its long-term competitive position, with security, API-first integration, payments, accessibility, and core onboarding flows confirmed as the non-negotiable foundation. The information architecture brought all three streams together into a single structure built around how enterprise asset managers actually think rather than how the platform was technically organized.