Problem: Design decisions often stall when requirements are unclear, stakeholders disagree, or constraints conflict.
Role: Senior UX Designer, responsible for making and guiding decisions under ambiguity.
Scope: Decision making, tradeoffs, collaboration, and alignment across complex products and internal systems.
Outcome: A clear set of principles that help teams move forward responsibly when the right answer isn’t obvious.
Why This System Mattered
Monthly rate adjustments were a core part of the business, but the system supporting them hadn’t kept pace with scale.
As volume increased, updates became harder to manage, errors were more costly, and operational risk grew. What had once been manageable became a bottleneck.
When the Tools Became the Bottleneck
The system technically worked, but only through workarounds and institutional knowledge.
There was no easy way to track rate changes, support historical pricing, or validate complex adjustments. As a result, updates were slow, fragile, and increasingly risky.
What the System Needed to Do
The goal wasn’t to add features; it was to make complex work manageable at scale.
The system needed to support accurate edits, preserve historical context, validate complex pricing logic, and reduce the risk of errors during high volume updates.
Understanding How the Work Actually Happens
I spent time shadowing internal users and gathering direct feedback through surveys and working sessions. This revealed not only pain points, but also how users mentally grouped rates, services, and compliance rules while working.
These insights informed both the workflow and the information hierarchy, ensuring the system aligned with real usage rather than legacy data structures.
Updates became faster, errors were reduced, and specialists were able to manage pricing changes with greater confidence. The system scaled with the business instead of working against it; reducing operational risk and supporting growth without added overhead.
A streamlined workflow that reflects how rate updates are performed in practice.
Final designs emphasizing hierarchy, orientation, and repeatable patterns.
Reflections & Impact
This project reinforced the importance of designing for real operational behavior, not ideal workflows.
By prioritizing clarity, validation, and scale from the start, the system could evolve alongside the business without requiring constant intervention or rework.
Design Considerations
Default state for creating a new rate table, designed to clearly communicate next steps before any data is added.
Early synthesis work used to align on key problems, constraints, and functional requirements before design execution.
A consolidated review screen allowing users to verify rate details before committing changes.
A snapshot of qualitative feedback highlighting efficiency gains, reduced manual effort, and confidence in the new system.