ENTERPRISE PLATFORM UX / WORKFLOW OPTIMIZATION
Redesigning a financial data governance platform
Redesigned a legacy financial data governance platform used by a global life sciences enterprise, restructuring workflows, surfacing actionable work, and reducing average task complexity from 20+ screens to around 5.
All visuals and examples in this case study have been redesigned to respect NDA constraints.
ROLE
ux designer, sole designer for 4 months
TIMELINE
9 months (2024-2025)
SCOPE
user interviews,
workflow mapping,
information architecture
wireframing,
prototyping
THE CHALLENGE
Users were spending more time navigating the platform than doing their work
I worked on an internal financial data governance platform, used by a global healthcare company to manage and approve critical financial records.
Our users, called "data stewards," were responsible for managing dozens of financial data change requests governed by strict approval rules. The existing experience made this harder than it needed to be. Workflows were fragmented across multiple systems, paths were complex and branching, and request ownership and status were hard to track.
Mapping the existing workflows revealed just how much branching complexity users were navigating every time they needed to complete a simple task.
MY ROLE
Growing from supporting designer to sole designer.
My role evolved over the course of the project, starting as a supporting designer before taking on design ownership for about four months.
I ran one-on-one sessions with data stewards and SMEs and mapped existing workflows end to end, identified inconsistencies and opportunities to simplify, and iterated on solutions in Figma. As the team scaled up, I helped onboard incoming designers and get them up to speed.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Every decision came back to designing for subject matter experts
The majority of our users were seasoned data stewards who used the platform every day, and needed to get their requests through quickly. We worked closely with them through each step of the design process, showing them work-in-progress prototypes to see whether each change actually made their work faster.
LANDING PAGE
Repurposing the landing page into an actionable surface
The legacy landing experience functioned like a dashboard, requiring users to navigate into categories to find their work. From talking to them, it became pretty clear that they usually entered the platform with a single question in mind:
What requests do I need to act on right now?
Rather than optimizing the existing dashboard layout, we redesigned the landing page around user intent and urgency, surfacing actionable requests and ownership signals immediately.
BEFORE
AFTER
ACTIONABLE REQUESTS FIRST
Surfaced request status and ownership upfront, so users could see what needed their attention without digging.
CATEGORY-FIRST NAVIGATION
Enabled quick entry into request or edit flows by surfacing master data categories upfront, making the system's structure legible from the start.
PERSONALIZED FOR REPEAT USERS
Added a 'My Favorites' section so daily users could pin frequently used categories and skip repetitive navigation.
Together these changes turned the landing page from a navigation problem into an actionable surface. Users could now see what needed their attention the moment they logged in.
WORKFLOW
Anchoring workflows to data categories instead of actions
The original workflow was built with a focus on new users, with a guided path to help them figure out which data category they needed. But in practice, most users were subject matter experts who used the platform every day. The guided flow that was meant to help them was actually slowing them down.
By redesigning the entry point to directly surface all 27 master data categories, users could immediately select the workflow they needed. This created clear, linear paths per category and made workflows easier to navigate for both first-time and repeat users.
BEFORE
Workflows began with abstract actions like create, modify, or delete, then branched through decision trees into 20+ screens.
AFTER
Starting from the data category gave each actionable workflow one clear path.
This reduced the average workflow from over 20 screens down to around 5 — a significant drop in complexity for users who were navigating these paths every single day.
DATA ENTRY
Improving data entry within platform and engineering constraints
Not every design decision is about the ideal solution. This project ran on a pre-existing enterprise component library with backend architecture already in progress, which meant some patterns we wanted weren't feasible to build.
One of the more complex parts of every workflow was the data input screen. In the existing experiences, users needed to: 1. input their data on a screen
2. click a button to validate the data
3. click "next group" to go to the next set of data, and repeat the process 4-5 more times
BEFORE
Ideally we would have redesigned the data entry experience entirely for a solution that would not require horizontal scrolling. However, the development team needed something close to an Excel-like experience since many users were mass-pasting data directly into tables. Rather than pushing for an idealized solution, we focused on the most impactful improvements we could realistically ship.
AFTER
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Consolidated multiple groups and pages into a single horizontally scrollable screen
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Added explicit row actions (delete, copy, and add rows) that were previously buried or absent
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Cleaned up table headers and consolidated instruction text above the table
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Added a "Show Only Errors" toggle so users could filter to just what needed fixing
Working within constraints like these is part of enterprise design. The goal isn't a perfect interface — it's the best possible experience given what can actually be built.
IMPACT
Handing off a simpler experience to development
The redesigned platform was still in development when I left the project. My work on this project contributed to clearer request ownership and status visibility, standardized workflows across 27 master data categories, and a more scalable foundation for future governance needs.
More than the design decisions themselves, this project taught me how important it is to really listen to users before designing anything. Understanding their actual pain points, not assumed ones, shaped every decision we made.
It also showed me that working within engineering constraints doesn't mean compromising on quality. We couldn't always build the ideal solution, but by staying close to the development team and understanding what was feasible, we found workable solutions that served everyone.