A UX Modernization Roadmap

Overview

In eight weeks, I helped a technical reporting platform used by engineering and environmental consulting firms move from an undocumented, inconsistent interface to a validated UX baseline and a prioritized design roadmap. As the lead visual designer on a four-person team, I translated a heuristic audit of 100 markers and eight customer interviews into home dashboard concepts, a restructured information architecture, and a component system scoped as a real, fundable MVP.

The platform scored 330 out of 490 (a D) on our UX IQ benchmark going in. Our roadmap gave the client a documented, prioritized path toward a B.

Information

Client

Confidential (a SaaS platform used by engineering, environmental science, and land development firms to author technical field reports). Engaged through Perficient.

Role

Lead Visual / UI Designer

Industry

Construction technology, technical report management (SaaS)

The Problem

Design of client dashboard

The platform is the system of record for technical field reports at engineering, land development, environmental science, and sustainability firms, delivered to regulators and clients. Interviewed customers had moved from Word and a legacy tool and valued the platform’s power and flexibility. That loyalty was real, but so was the friction.

Years of feature growth outpaced the design system. Buttons looked unclickable. Similar report categories caused confusion. SmartTable formulas didn’t recalculate or support lookups, forcing manual rebuilds. WordBank bulk edits failed silently. The dashboard was cluttered with unwanted widgets, while urgent tasks were hidden.

To move past opinion, we ran a 100-marker heuristic audit across 10 categories, benchmarked against products like Monday.com, Atlassian, and MailChimp. The platform scored 330 out of 490 overall, a D. Accessibility (17/45) and Aesthetics (25/50) were the weakest, revealing barriers for keyboard-only and low-vision users, as well as visual inconsistency.

Role & Team

I owned this program end-to-end as both lead designer and product owner for the design system squad. That meant setting the design direction, including color, typography, components, and patterns, and running the cross-functional process that got engineering, marketing, and business stakeholders to actually use it. I partnered directly with front-end engineering on implementation and led bi-weekly working sessions that turned the system from a design deliverable into a shared standard.

Process & Research

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We ran two parallel research tracks: a UX IQ audit and customer interviews.

The audit scored 100 markers across 10 categories, including Findable, Credible, Functional, Efficient, Aesthetic, Accessible, and Usable. Grounded in Nielsen Norman Group heuristics, it benchmarked core pages against products such as Monday.com, Atlassian, MailChimp, and Wayfair, so the client could see both what was broken and what “good” looked like.

In parallel, we interviewed eight daily users across engineering, environmental science, land development, and sustainability. Each 30- to 45-minute session explored their current experience, feature feedback, support needs, barriers, personalization, and future vision.
Together, the audit and interviews turned scores into a clearer story. The lowest-scoring marker, “interface elements offer affordances,” earned 1 out of 5. A user explained the impact: on a laptop, “you cannot see everything you need to see unless you zoom out to like 70 or 80 percent.” The score showed where to focus; the quote showed why it mattered.

A competitive review then showed the platform matched or exceeded two direct competitors on nearly every functional dimension, reframing the issue from “we’re behind on features” to “we have the functionality, but we’re losing on experience.”

Finally, I translated navigation complaints, duplicate labels, inconsistent hierarchy, and pop-up-obstructed menus into a full site map across all eight top-level areas. Restructuring the information architecture—not just the visual layer—became the biggest lever for improving Findable and Usable scores.

The Solution

I started with two home dashboard directions—a light theme and a dark theme—both built around the same task-first structure. Instead of the old, cluttered widget grid, each concept opened with a “What do you need to do today?” search prompt that foregrounded the user’s goal. Below it, a consolidated “My Dashboard” card brought together pinned items, time tracking, and shared report status, directly responding to interview feedback that the previous dashboard “feels redundant” and had “too many widgets, making them cluttered and underutilized.” A redesigned “My Recent Reports” table extended that same clarity by adding visible status and ownership, and one-click PDF generation.

Within that shared structure, the dark theme served as more than a visual alternative. Several interviewees spent long stretches in the report editor, and the audit scored visual unity and hierarchy 2 out of 5, so the dark concept became a hypothesis to reduce eye strain and improve focus during extended editing sessions. The light theme remained the accessible default because the accessibility review had already flagged contrast issues. Presenting both options gave the client a clear path to validate the strongest direction with users before committing.

Before: Original content and folder project

After: New design suggestion

Once the dashboard direction established the task-first pattern, I carried the same logic into the new report creation flow, the report editor toolbar, the recent projects folder view, and the photo gallery and appendix screen. Each update tied back to a specific interview pain point, including photo organization before fieldwork, unclear report status, and inconsistent library labels.

These product concepts then fed into a three-horizon roadmap. The quick wins addressed load testing, PDF generation performance, and Infrastructure as Code expansion; the medium-term work covered a frontend component framework, audit logging, and better handling of long-running tasks; and the long-term horizon focused on full IaC adoption, automated performance monitoring, and reduced database bottlenecks. At the center of the medium-term plan was a proposed 20-component design system, scoped as a single budgetable unit rather than an open-ended redesign so the client could bring it into planning conversations.

Before: Actual Design report

After: New Design report

Outcome

Final dashboard design

The engagement paused after the roadmap and concept phase for budget reasons, so none of the concepts reached production and I do not have adoption, conversion, or satisfaction data to report. The honest outcome is that the client left with something valuable but pre-launch: a documented baseline, a prioritized plan, and a clear path to fund the next phase.

The work produced four concrete assets the client could keep and use:

A UX IQ baseline of 330 out of 490 across 100 markers and 10 categories, giving the client a defensible measure for future design decisions.

Eight customer interviews synthesized into a prioritized backlog for SmartTable, WordBank, Report Tags, Maps, and multi-currency support.

A three-horizon roadmap with a 20-component design system scoped as the MVP, turning “redesign the app” into a phased, approvable investment.

Competitive validation against two direct competitors, reframing the problem from a feature gap to a more fundable experience gap.

The project also clarified how to make the case for change. Pairing heuristic scores with customers’ own words moved stakeholders more effectively than either evidence type alone, and involving a technical architect from week one made the roadmap credible as engineering work rather than just a design wish list.

If I ran the engagement again, I would usability test the light and dark dashboard concepts with a few interviewed customers before the roadmap presentation to make the budget conversation even stronger.

Redesigning Trust