Overview
An operations dashboard managed incidents, approvals, and live controls, but the interface had become hard to use under time pressure.
Challenge
Important actions were buried, state transitions were ambiguous, and shift handovers broke when teams interpreted the same screen differently.
Approach
We shadowed operators across shifts, mapped hot paths, and redesigned workflows around urgency and recovery. Prototypes were tested against real incident tasks before implementation.
Architecture
The frontend moved to consistent task patterns, role-aware navigation, and explicit status markers tied to backend refresh timing. Shared UI primitives reduced one-off behavior in critical screens.
Outcome
Teams made fewer action errors during incidents, and handovers improved because state was clearer at a glance. Support questions shifted from “where is this action?” to domain-level decisions.
Lessons
Operational UX is systems design. Visual cleanup alone does not fix decision risk.