Mission-Critical UX: Compliance and Audit Design Operations

TL;DR:

When seconds matter, trusting your product isn’t optional, it’s operational. Rebuilt a real-time USAF targeting dashboard to drive faster, more confident decisions under extreme stress.

Wins:

  • Accelerated alert response

  • Reduced decision hesitation

  • Design patterns scaled across command systems

  • Metrics redacted per security protocol

Project Info:

  • Role: Role: Lead UX Designer embedded with Kessel Run, partnered with Advanced Battle Management Lab

  • Scope: Full UX lifecycle, research, IA, prototyping, testing, and visual design

  • Platform: A secure, real-time dashboard designed for command and control in stressful operations.

  • Tools: Figma (secure), heuristic evaluations, task simulations, operator feedback synthesis

Table of Contents:

Note: Due to security protocols, product visuals, wireframes, and quantitative metrics are redacted. This case reflects process, decisions, and abstracted outcomes suitable for public viewing.

Image of participant from capstone event.

Overview:

As Lead UX Designer, I redesigned a real-time coordination system used by global teams during high-stakes operations.

My mission: support fast decisions without losing clarity or trust. I mapped role-specific workflows, broke the interface into modular parts, and built smart support tools to help users act quickly and confidently under pressure.

Challenge:

  • Fragmented Workflows: Operators used siloed tools with inconsistent hierarchies and no unified decision path.

  • Cognitive Load Under Pressure: The original interface overwhelmed users with homogeneous data.

  • Role Misalignment: A single UI served all users, obscuring critical context and responsibilities.

Research & Discovery:

  • Conducted 14+ contextual interviews with active-duty operators.

  • Shadowed real-time simulations to surface pain points.

  • Mapped bugs in live coordination scenarios (e.g., alert stacking, ambiguity during escalation).

Key Insight: Operators weren’t just managing systems, they were hearding cats. The UX had to support quick filtering, clear escalation, and smooth teamwork under pressure.

IA & Interaction Design:

I redesigned the layout to match how fast decisions needed to happen. Each role, targeting, command leads, and communications, got its own view built around how they actually work. I also added a color-coded system for escalading alerts. The interface adjusted based on context, showing only the most important info and hiding the rest until it’s needed.

  • Example: In high-pressure situations, unimportant info was tucked into collapsible sections. It reduced clutter and helped users focus on what mattered most.

Design Rationale: Userflow Insights

The targeting cycle happens fast and depends on tightly coordinated team roles. I reverse-engineered the user flows using:

  • The full F2T2EA cycle (Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess)

  • Key handoffs between intelligence and combat teams

  • Latency issues surfaced in command and operator interviews

  • Mapped UX structure to a modified OODA loop to reduce friction during the observe, orient, and decide phases

These flows became the blueprint for the interface.

I created diagrammatic flows showing each role’s action sequence and points of data handoff. While visuals are redacted, these graphs structured the layout logic.

Click image to enlarge it.

Time-ladder alignment

Visualizing Trust Over Time in Targeting Flow

The visual show how confidence in intel builds over time and with each phase of the targeting process.

The UI was designed to reveal only the intel needed at each phase, reducing overload and keeping users focused. This helped teams maintain momentum and make faster, more confident decisions as targeting evolved.

Click image to enlarge it.

Vertical depth funnel

Progressive Disclosure Aligned to Escalation Urgency

The visual shows how information is funneled from raw data to an executed action.

Data collected and transmitted from remote sources was organized by confidence level, quick-read cues on top, with expandable layers for deeper checks. This let operators act fast while keeping detailed context available when needed.

Click image to enlarge it.

Loop-back architecture

Adaptive UX for Reassessment and Recovery

This visual shows the Dynamic Targeting cycle and how each phase flows in sequence.

I designed fallback paths for failed target checks, allowing operators to reassess or escalate without starting over. These flexible flows made the UX more resilient, mirroring real-world protocols and contingency plans.

These user flows were key to aligning the dashboard’s structure with military protocols and how operators actually work under time pressure.

Image of participant from capstone event.

Prototype & Testing Approach:

  • Developed secure, high-fidelity prototypes

  • Conducted live time-sensitive simulations with operators

  • Observed interaction drop-offs, confidence signals, and clickpath entropy

Iterative Wins: Re-prioritized information and repositioned decision cues based on observed user painpoints.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Integration:

  • Partnered with command advisors to ground design logic in operational doctrine

  • Biweekly syncs with PM & engineers to roadmap feasibility and unblock dependencies

  • Integrated operator feedback into iteration loops during sprints

Outcomes:

  • Before: All roles used the same UI, which delayed clarity during targeting.
    After: Role-specific dashboards brought mission-critical data to the forefront.

  • Before: No recovery logic between roles forced users to start over.
    After: Loop-back architecture let teams reassess quickly without losing progress.

  • Before: Raw data flooded the screen and broke focus.
    After: Confidence-first flows prioritized key info and triggered focused escalation when needed.

Reflection:

“What we are seeing here [at the ShOC‑N] is 90% ingenuity and grit and 10% resourcing.” — Col. Jonathan Zall, ABMS Cross Functional Team

I specialize in systems where user trust and strict compliance is important. My strength is designing UX that supports fast decisions, clear roles, and deep trust, especially in secure, high-stakes environments that need to be audited.

What I bring to systems UX: Architectures that support real-time decision-making, role-specific clarity for distributed teams, reusable design patterns built for audit and compliance, and fluency in environments where failure has real consequences.

Citation: