The Challenge: Shifting Executive Mindsets

• I joined the team to lead redesign of a platform built 15 years ago in Flash.

• I soon learned that executive team expectation of rebuilding existing platform was to port the Flash UI to HTML basically 1:1.

• I was provided time to study the platform and quickly identified signs of fairly obvious UI issues that stemmed from numerous customizations on top of original UI by different clients reflecting their individual workflow preferences.

• My team formed a hypothesis: the product's complexity and inconsistent design were hurting overall experience — but we needed research to prove it, and CEO seemed oblivious to it which made it especially tricky.

• My first win was I persuaded leadership to green light an “internal” usability testing with internal teams with a purpose of “creating the baseline” for the experience — setting the stage for deeper changes.

Some existing major screens before redesign:

The Challenge: Redesigning a Legacy System

• Once we had buy-in, we uncovered usability friction, unclear workflows, and inconsistent navigation patterns.

• The product had evolved in silos over 15 years, leading to bloated UI and opaque experiences that worked only because teams have used them hundreds of times versus because they were intuitive.

• The next challenge was figuring out how to untangle and rebuild it — without alienating longtime users.

Reframing the Redesign

• I initiated stakeholder interviews and prototype testing that challenged assumptions.

• This work revealed deeper issues around user onboarding, approval workflows, and discoverability.

• The hardest was tell executives there were problems with existing design, but the research helped us not making it personal.

• We slowly started shifting from a visual translation mindset to a usability-focused rebuild — with executive buy-in.

UX Strategy

• Build a parallel experience to existing and provide user ability to switch back and forth.

• Retain legacy look and feel as much as possible to help existing customers cross over to new experience. 

• Start with larger & more complex epics to address more complex patterns that will lead to new components.  

• 1 year roadmap outline for all platform redesign.

• Core KPIs - time, quality, engagement

• Our process followed iterative Design Thinking loops: 
research → design → prototype → test → refine.

Technical Roadblock

• Our original plan: build a modern UI in parallel with legacy, allowing users to toggle - a tech spike revealed this was impossible — the system could only serve one frontend at a time.

• We pivoted to a phased “wave” release strategy, rebuilding feature by feature.

• We also had to pull back many UI enhancements, as we had to keep the designs consistent with the current UI styles of other features.

Design Iteration: The Uploader

• The Uploader workflow was chosen instead of a more complex feature to test the approach.

• The current uploader had 8 steps even though a user may only needed to do two so I looked to redesign to reduce steps, clarify progress, and unify metadata input.

• We improved discoverability of “Uplink,” streamlined asset grouping, and introduced visual hierarchy to reduce user friction.

One of the initial wireframes: