Product Designer
& Strategy Consultant
U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA)
May 31, 2024
Functional Design Lead
Design Thinking, Business Analysis, UX Design, Project Management, Change Management, Salesforce, Declarative Design
Collaborated with Food and Nutrition Services agency within USDA for multi-year UX-BA-CM support throughout the life cycle of a system migration from discovery to post-launch. Leveraged design thinking principles to understand stakeholder painpoints and business goals. Planned and executed multiple phases of project including discovery, SIT/UAT, and training and change management.
Facilitated a dynamic 3-day design workshop with 14 participants, including the project team and key client stakeholders, to identify pain points, brainstorm solutions, and co-create a 9-month product roadmap.
Developed 20+ wireframes and 3 robust user flows in Sketch for a tailored Salesforce 'Project' dashboard and configured an Internal Home Page using declarative design.
Planned and led the project's Change Management Phase, conducting 25+ hours of user research, facilitating 20+ hours of live training and support, creating 15+ training communications, to ensure adoption across user base of varying technology skill levels.
Led discovery and alignment for a $5.8M Salesforce migration engagement, facilitating a 3-day design thinking workshop across a prime contractor, subcontractor, and federal client to surface pain points, prioritize features, and co-create a 9-month roadmap — delivering a go-live on time and on scope.
Identified a critical usability issue during pre-launch testing where program analysts struggled to navigate a data-dense dashboard — rapidly iterated to a simplified two-column layout organized by project lifecycle and object priority, resolving the issue before go-live for a user base of 10–15 federal analysts.
Measured post-launch success through user satisfaction signals and office hours attendance, observing a notable uptick in satisfaction scores within 3 weeks of go-live and a reduction in recurring support needs — validating both the design decisions and the effectiveness of the change management program.
Contributed to the pre-award phase of this engagement by authoring sections of the technical proposal response and developing the basis of estimate — providing direct input that helped position the firm to win and stand up the $5.8M contract.