Typography Was How We Made Complex Configuration Readable

On Zammit, the hardest PM problem wasn't features — it was getting an engineer, architect, or contractor to configure a made-to-order product without a sales rep walking them through it. Typography and visual hierarchy did a lot of that quiet work. A shelving configurator asks for overall dimensions, shelf count, edge profiles, per-shelf depth, and placement. Dumped flat, that reads as a form to abandon. So I used hierarchy to sequence decisions: primary dimensions sit at the top of the visual order, secondary refinements recede, and the running summary and price stay legible as anchors. Type scale and weight signalled what to decide now versus later, which kept users from feeling the full complexity at once. For a PM, this is conversion and support deflection: clearer hierarchy meant fewer stalls in the self-serve flow and fewer questions that would otherwise route back to a human. Hierarchy also held across web and mobile, where vertical space is scarce and a weak scale collapses into noise. Good typography here wasn't decoration — it was the interface deciding what the user should think about next.