Scaling UX Maturity Across 200+ Stakeholders

This project involved an internal system, so specific details are confidential. The focus here is on my design approach, system strategy, and the impact of the work.

Overview

At Spatial Front, I led the USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) division in scaling and structuring design across multiple complex, data-heavy applications while growing UX maturity across 200+ stakeholders and scaling the design team from 4 to 15 designers. These products were originally built without design in mind, resulting in inconsistencies, accessibility gaps, and workflow inefficiencies. I rebuilt them using Google Material, Microsoft Fluent UI, and USDA/FPAC frameworks, focusing on design systems, UX strategy, standards, and team growth, establishing a foundation for sustainable, cohesive design across the organization.

Challenge

Spatial Front’s digital ecosystem lacked a unified design approach for developing USDA products:

• No UI frameworks caused inconsistent user experiences

• Accessibility standards were applied unevenly across products

• UX was not embedded early in product development, leading to dev rework

• Low UX maturity and no formal structure to grow or support individuals or a team of designers

Objective

Create a hybrid design system aligned with federal brand guidelines, advocate for UX at all levels, reduce re-work, standardize design practices, improve accessibility, educate design cross-functionally, and establish a scalable design organization for future growth.

My Role & Approach

As Lead UX/UI Designer, I led a comprehensive design strategy balancing product, system, and organizational needs:

• Design Systems & Standards

  • Audited existing UI patterns and identified inconsistencies by prioritizing the highest-traffic workflows first, since a full system rebuild wasn't feasible given legacy constraints and competing delivery timelines

  • Designed a hybrid system combining Material, Fluent, and USDA components to extend familiar frameworks rather than build them from scratch to shorten adoption time for developers already fluent in them

  • Documented design elements, accessibility standards, and interaction guidelines so the system could scale without me as a bottleneck

• UX Advocacy & Strategy

  • Partnered with stakeholders at all levels to ensure UX is considered from day one in every project, which meant building trust with engineering leads who had previously seen design as a late-stage visual add-on

  • Integrated UX earlier in the Agile process to reduce rework and improve alignment between design and development

  • Standardized an end-to-end UX approach for all designers providing resources, guidelines, and a repeatable framework. Deliberately favored lightweight, adoptable tools over a heavier process that risked being ignored under deadline pressure

  • Served as the UX voice in strategic discussions, representing user needs in leadership-level conversations where design hadn't historically had a seat

• Team Growth & Organizational Structure

  • Defined roles, responsibilities, and career paths for designers, addressing a retention and motivation risk: designers without a growth path were the most likely to leave

  • Hired and mentored junior designers while promoted cross-functional collaboration

  • Built a foundation for repeatable design practices across future products

  • Co-lead a UX Community of Practice and educated non-designers about design, improving UX maturity through the entire organization.

Impact

• Scaled the design team from 4 to 15 designers while growing UX maturity across 200+ stakeholders

• Improved task completion, pattern adherence, and design-to-dev handoff efficiency by ~28–31% by embedding UX earlier in the Agile process

• Increased user retention by ~18% through improved consistency, accessibility, and workflow efficiency across products

• Unified multiple enterprise applications under one hybrid design system, standardizing patterns previously built ad hoc

Tradeoffs

I deliberately scoped the initial system to focus on the highest-impact workflows rather than attempting a full rework. Even though a broader rollout would have looked more impressive on paper, it would have risked stalling under legacy technical constraints and losing stakeholder buy-in before showing results. Similarly, I chose a lighter-weight documentation and process framework over a more rigorous one, because adoption mattered more than completeness in an organization with low starting UX maturity. In hindsight, this tradeoff paid off in speed of adoption, though it meant revisiting and tightening standards in a second pass as the team matured.

Key Takeaways

This project highlights the value of systemic thinking and UX advocacy: creating structures that educate non-designers, unify experiences, improve accessibility, and embed user-centered design into organizational culture. It reinforced my ability to lead design at scale, balance strategic and tactical work, and influence both products and teams across a large federal agency.