Elicker
Note: Note: This case study highlights work on an enterprise SaaS platform for a U.S. military client. Some details have been modified or omitted for confidentiality.
I’ve been personally involved with this project since August 2023.
An Operational Readiness System
This project involved an enterprise SaaS platform designed to manage training, operational readiness, and personnel data across large, distributed teams.
The system enables users and leadership to track training completion, assess individual and team readiness, and organize mission-critical information within a centralized environment. By providing clear visibility into readiness and support-related data, the platform supports informed decision-making across multiple levels of an organization.
As the platform evolved, it expanded to support workforce well-being through tools that coordinate and track access to counseling, group support, and related resources. These capabilities help teams manage participation, availability, and continuity of care across distributed environments.
Client
Confidential
My Role
Lead Product Design
UX Strategy & Interaction Design
Design Language
Design System Development
Designed for Role-Based Leadership
Designed for multiple roles, including leadership, training coordination, and command oversight, the platform uses a role-based, permissions-driven system to surface relevant data and workflows. This enables efficient evaluation of training status, readiness, and personnel needs across a distributed organization.
Design Leadership and System Development
The platform had taken shape without a dedicated design function, leaving behind a fragmented interface and uneven user experience. Bringing it into alignment meant introducing structure, clarity, and a more intentional approach to how the product was designed and evolved.
A design system became the foundation for that shift, establishing shared patterns, reusable components, and a consistent visual language that could scale with the product. With that in place, the interface moved from a collection of disconnected elements to a more cohesive and predictable system.
Alignment between design and engineering was reinforced through a token-based styling approach paired with high-fidelity prototypes to support stakeholder discussions. Collaboration across product and engineering helped untangle workflows, streamline user flows, and modernize the product experience. Early concepts were shaped and refined through targeted feedback, allowing improvements to compound as the platform matured.
This system establishes a consistent framework for structuring form and content containers across the application. By standardizing spacing, alignment, and hierarchy, the design ensures that both input-driven and informational components follow a predictable rhythm, reducing cognitive load and improving scanability. Each container type, whether form fields, long-form content, or acknowledgment blocks, adheres to a shared layout logic while accommodating different interaction needs.
Particular attention was given to spacing increments and edge alignment, as shown in the grid overlays. These constraints create visual continuity across components and reinforce a cohesive system that scales across complex workflows. The result is a unified interface where structure supports usability, allowing users to focus on task completion rather than deciphering layout inconsistencies.
A Lack of Structure and Usability
When I joined, the platform lacked a cohesive design foundation and presented significant usability challenges. The interface was visually inconsistent, with no defined design standards or reusable components, resulting in fragmented user experiences and increased development overhead. Core workflows were difficult to follow, and users lacked clear guidance when completing key tasks.
Additionally, there was no structured mechanism for collecting user feedback, limiting visibility into usability issues. Early feedback revealed confusion around navigation, task completion, and overall system logic. These gaps created friction for users and slowed product development, as teams lacked a shared system for designing, building, and scaling features effectively.
Building a Scalable Design Foundation
I designed a scalable foundation for the platform by introducing a cohesive design system, improving core workflows, and establishing consistent interaction patterns.
This included building a component library and reusable UI patterns to standardize the interface and reduce visual and functional inconsistencies. A token-based styling system was implemented to align design and engineering, ensuring consistency across components and accelerating development.
I restructured key user flows to simplify complex workflows, particularly around training and readiness tracking, improving clarity in how users complete critical tasks. High-fidelity prototypes in Figma were used to validate concepts, align stakeholders, and guide implementation.
I also focused on defining predictable interaction behaviors and resolving edge cases, ensuring the system could scale reliably as new features and workflows were introduced.
Final Outcome
The platform had taken shape without a dedicated design function, leaving behind a fragmented interface and uneven user experience. Bringing it into alignment meant introducing structure, clarity, and a more intentional approach to how the product was designed and evolved.
By introducing a design system, standardizing interaction patterns, and simplifying user flows, the platform evolved into a more intuitive and scalable product. The redesign improved usability, reduced ambiguity in key workflows, and enabled more efficient feature development through reusable components and clearer design-engineering alignment. The updated experience was positively received by users and stakeholders, reflecting a measurable improvement in both clarity and consistency across the platform.
