Document Management System Redesign + Design System
Overview
This project was to update the user experience of the organization’s highest selling product - a sophisticated chemical document management SaaS (software as a service) product. The goal was to turn visually modernize a five year old web application while addressing workflow and ease-of-use issues learned from the prior version of the application.
This complex, responsive web application allows organizations to comply with governmental safety regulations from the US, Canada, UK, and more. It focuses heavily on document management and chemical tracking for right-to-know information and employee job safety. It also supports organizational management (users, roles, locations), approval management, and reporting capabilities.
Team: 2-4 UX Designers, 3 Business Analysts, 1 Product Manager, 7-10 Software/DB engineers, 4-6 QA
My Involvement
Lead the UX, design, and front-end coding efforts
Design, maintain, and document a custom design system site that included design philosophy, usage guidelines and examples of layouts and UI components, with HTML/CSS examples for each component
Define an updated visual aesthetic with shared components that could be scalable and applied to future offerings
Partner and assist with an outside UX firm to perform user research
Make data-driven UX decisions based on the qualitative data from user research
Define an updated visual aesthetic that could be scalable and applied to future offerings
Design, maintain, and document a custom design system site that included design philosophy, usage guidelines and examples of layouts and UI components, with HTML/CSS examples for each component
Partner with product and engineering teams to define the roadmap for updating the 100+ unique screens of the application
Design screens and features, provide interaction requirements, and provide front-end coded page templates for the engineering team
Implement user onboarding, analytics, and user feedback tools through Pendo
Onboard and manage two new UX team members halfway through project
Outcomes
The redesign of this document management application succeeded in reaching its goals and is now used by 17,000+ organizations. Additionally, the new visual design originating from this project is now present in six additional product offerings.
Users have reported that navigation and organization of content feels intuitive, and expected actions on screens are obvious to complete their respective tasks, validating many of the design decisions that were made. Research is ongoing to refine existing features and define new ones.