my latest work

overview

In my latest role as a UX designer and product owner at Booz Allen Hamilton, I led design on a 25-person interdisciplinary team to deliver a high-stakes application for the United States European Command. As a product owner, I used my subject matter expertise about the mission set and user base to provide operational context to the development team and make decisions about app direction. As a designer, I implemented what users actually needed to do their jobs, not what other people asked for on their behalf. I compared mockups to development builds, flagged styling issues in pull requests, and proposed how to fix them using my computer science background. I traveled internationally to see how users really interact with the application and to note pain points that video calls and emails can't capture. I used my unique skill set to close the gap between product decisions, my designs, and the deliverable.

The application supports planning, operations, and crisis management for users with different workflows and definitions of success. When we moved to a cloud platform, I used that as an opportunity to redesign the product around user feedback. I can't share details of this project, but I can share the design problems I faced and what I did about them in order to best represent how I work.

planning

I redesigned the planning interface to address friction points around data entry. Users had to build a table one row at a time, then open a modal to edit and save each line. I replaced those steps with import/export and auto-population using what the system already knew about the mission set so planners could finish the task faster.

To simplify the way users input information from their source material, I mirrored those source documents in the interface so the layout matched what users were used to, leaving no room for error.

I also broke the planning section into distinct pages with clear status indicators so the shared workspace always reflected the most up-to-date information and no required field went untouched.

operations

I highlighted at-a-glance operational progress to show what already happened, what's happening now, and what to expect next.

An ineffective donut chart was the main visualization for task progression, so I redesigned how on-ground actions were tracked, making status easy to scan and understand.

To keep updates from getting buried, I added a toast notification system, which evolved into a static activity feed, to surface important changes and keep the operational picture up-to-date.

crisis management

In a crisis, senior leaders need to make quick decisions, so the goal was to create a single strategic dashboard to absorb information at a glance. Different users wanted different things from the same tool, so I had to decide what earned a place on the strategic view and what would only slow people down.

let's connect

I'm happy to discuss more of this work in person.