Interviews were synthesized into representative user types, helping the team distinguish shared needs from role-specific workflows.

From Interviews to System Understanding

Mapping the existing onboarding process revealed how many handoffs, approvals, systems and decision points stood between a new user and a functioning account. Visualizing the workflow helped the team identify opportunities to simplify the future experience rather than merely reskin the existing process.

Organizing the Product Landscape

I organized research findings and business requirements into functional areas, creating a shared model of the capabilities the future gateway would need to support.

Architecture diagrams and future-state workflows helped explain the proposed direction, but stakeholders also needed to experience what modernization could actually feel like.

I translated the future-state model into wireframes and an interactive prototype centered on one of the gateway’s most important and problematic workflows: creating and submitting a new package. The prototype transformed abstract requirements into something stakeholders could navigate, discuss, and evaluate.

From Transaction to Guided Workflow

Designing a Guided Submission Experience

I shared the interactive prototype with the internal team before presenting it more broadly. Feedback exposed practical needs that weren’t obvious in the initial workflow, including clearer progress feedback and the ability to save work during a lengthy submission process. Those refinements were incorporated before stakeholder review.

Turning a Concept into a Roadmap

Over four months, the multidisciplinary team moved from research and current-state analysis through requirements, future-state architecture and an interactive prototype. The final recommendation didn’t stop at describing what a modernized gateway could become. It outlined a phased path for moving from the legacy system toward that future experience.

My visual models, workflows, and prototype helped make both the vision and the transition understandable, translating complex user, business, and technical considerations into an experience stakeholders could see, discuss, and evaluate.

Moving from concept to proof of concept introduced new technical constraints. The implementation platform required some of the earlier ideas and workflows to be reconsidered, while complex processes such as account creation needed significantly more detail before development could begin.

The selected implementation platform introduced capabilities and constraints that hadn’t been present during the exploratory phase. Rather than forcing the original concepts into the new environment, I revisited workflows and interaction patterns to make sure the experience remained usable while being technically achievable.

I worked from the future-state vision into increasingly detailed flows and wireframes, balancing user needs, business requirements, technical constraints, and the capabilities of the selected platform.

Resolving Complexity Before Designing Screens

Some workflows that appeared simple at a high level became significantly more complex once business rules, user roles, approvals, exceptions, and technical constraints were considered. I mapped these interactions in detail before designing screens so that edge cases and decision points could be resolved before development.

From Logic to Interface

With the detailed workflow established, I translated key paths into low-fidelity wireframes to validate screen sequence, information requirements and interactions before investing in higher-fidelity design.

Designing Across Roles

As the proof of concept expanded, the challenge shifted from designing individual workflows to maintaining a coherent experience across different user roles. Shared navigation, patterns, and interactions needed to remain consistent while dashboards, capabilities, and information adapted to each user’s responsibilities.

Rather than creating isolated interfaces for every task, I designed shared patterns that could support increasingly specific views through filtering, search, contextual actions, and role-based content.

For administrative users, the dashboard emphasized operational awareness, including workload distribution and time-sensitive submissions, while other roles received views tailored to their responsibilities.

Different users often needed access to the same underlying information but for different purposes. I designed shared patterns and navigation while adapting available actions, information density, and workflow steps to each role’s responsibilities.

This allowed the experience to remain consistent without forcing every user through identical workflows.

Validating and Communicating the Direction

The proof of concept met its defined requirements and demonstrated that the future-state experience could translate into a viable product direction. Because of the compressed timeline and significant technical work required, validation during the POC focused primarily on internal and key stakeholder feedback, with broader usability testing planned for subsequent development.

To communicate the proposed experience beyond the immediate project team, I also helped shape and produce a short product video for executive stakeholders, developing the visual story, refining the script, recording narration, and editing prototype footage into a concise explanation of the future product.