All project names, internal tool identifiers, and specific business metrics have been fictionalized or abstracted. The designs and workflows shown are representative of the real design process and problem-solving approach.
Designing Clarity Into Complexity
Employees at a large enterprise organization faced significant friction when requesting necessary software and data permissions. They navigated a landscape of disconnected legacy tools with no plain-language guidance — making it nearly impossible to identify which access levels their role actually needed. The result was long wait times, frequent rejections, security risks from over-provisioning, and serious productivity loss across the organization.
Requests bounced between teams for weeks with no clear resolution path or visibility into status.
Employees guessed at access levels leading to security vulnerabilities and frequent rejections from approvers.
No plain-language help existed to explain what permissions a role actually needed — users were completely on their own.
Each with completely different mental models, needs, and failure modes.
Who They Are
Employees across sales, marketing, and finance who lack technical knowledge of backend permission structures.
Core Pain Points
Who They Are
Team members responsible for reviewing and approving a high volume of incoming access requests daily.
Core Pain Points
Every major design choice in this project was driven by one goal — replace technical complexity with human clarity. These three decisions defined the solution.
Consolidated several fragmented legacy tools into a single intuitive interface — eliminating system confusion and providing one centralized starting point for all permission needs.
Why It Mattered
Users were navigating 4 or more separate tools with no connection between them. One portal equals one mental model.
Replaced cryptic technical identifiers with clear descriptive terminology — allowing non-technical employees to understand exactly what access they were requesting without needing prior knowledge.
Why It Mattered
When users see technical jargon they guess. When they see plain language they make informed decisions.
Designed a guided workflow using task-based logic to lead users toward the minimum required level of access — reducing over-provisioning risk and speeding up approvals.
Why It Mattered
Choice overload causes hoarding. A guided path reduces security risk and gets people the access they need faster.
The Platform — Troubleshooting
Self-service troubleshooting dashboard — employees resolve access issues without waiting for manual support.
The final solution brought together everything that was fragmented into one guided intelligent experience. Four core features defined the platform:
Pre-filled domain information guiding users step by step through the request process — no guessing, no dead ends.
A central hub for viewing managing and tracking all active permissions in one place.
Plain-language explanations for access failures — reducing support tickets and empowering users to resolve issues independently.
Users find what they need through their job function not technical identifiers — the system speaks their language not the engineers.
The unified Google Access Management Portal — one centralized starting point replacing fragmented legacy tools.
The redesign transformed a broken fragmented system into a guided intelligent experience. Employees moved from guessing and hoarding access to making confident informed decisions every time.
Self-service diagnostic tools led to a noticeable decrease in manual support tickets from confused employees.
Promoting minimum required access reduced over-provisioning and improved overall security posture.
Designed for both access requesters and policy administrators — two completely different mental models in one unified system.
Replaced 4 or more disconnected legacy tools with a single centralized intelligent experience.
"Moving from a culture of guessing to informed confidence is the most impactful way to scale access management in a high-growth environment."
The Platform — AI Recommendations
AI-powered access recommendations — the system learns your role and suggests the right permissions automatically.
This project reinforced the importance of guided pathways in complex enterprise ecosystems. When users are presented with a list of technical options they default to hoarding access or guessing — which creates real security vulnerabilities across the organization.
By abstracting technical complexity into human-centered workflows and providing immediate feedback it is possible to simultaneously improve user productivity and organizational security. The lesson is simple — complexity does not have to feel complex to the people navigating it.
"Designing for enterprise does not mean designing for engineers. It means designing for the real humans sitting inside those systems every single day."
Ask me anything about her design process and projects.