Traverse UI Redesign
Company
Northwoods (2023–2024)
My role
Senior Product Designer
Team members
Senior Product Designer, Front-End Development Team
Timeline
5 months for design, 5 months for development
Background
Within about a month of starting at Northwoods, I was tasked with leading up a total UI redesign of Traverse, our flagship product. Traverse is a SaaS solution for human services agencies that provides document management, forms management, and mobility. With about 140 unique pages, it’s an expansive tool for two designers to totally overhaul in less than 5 months, so I took a personal interest in organizing our approach and getting the right stakeholder buy-in along the way.
Goals
Modernize an entire product without disorienting users
Get stakeholder buy-in
Create a brand-new design system
Challenges
Aggressive timeline
Large footprint
(140 unique pages)
Limited design support
(2 part-time designers)
Before
After
“Cleaner looking. Brighter and easier to navigate.”
— Traverse user
Early explorations
Using FigJam, I mapped out a timeline for the project with our chief product officer based on the key dates he felt were important. To kick things off, I wanted to make sure that the other designer and I had some space to consider multiple visual paths before socializing and getting feedback from outside voices. We considered color palettes, determined where to draw the line in terms of scope, and explored what type of emotions the visuals of Traverse should evoke through inspiration and mood boards.
Expanded execution
Once we had a general visual direction in place, it was time to create more key pages. This was the next step towards building a design system that would work for the whole product, and it presented more complex layout and interaction considerations.
Before
After
Design system
As we made more page templates, we started compiling a design system to document all our decisions and fill in any gaps. The other designer and I collaborated on what standards we wanted to implement for everything from content patterns and iconography to modal and navigation designs.
Our front-end development team was also instrumental in rolling out our design decisions across any pages that weren’t fully accounted for with designs. They made suggestions and spotted inconsistencies across the board that really elevated the final outcome of this work.
Release
From sharing the what and why behind a UI redesign with our executive leadership team through supporting the launch, I had a key role in creating slides and presenting them. I represented the design side of this work on 4 internal webinars and two customer webinars—one of which was our most well-attended product webinar to date with over 300 attendees.
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