Draftit
Role and responsibility
At Draftit, I stepped into a broader product design role with responsibility across research, interaction design, prototyping and visual direction.
Beyond delivering screens, I worked strategically with stakeholders and developers to define what problems we should solve, not just how to solve them. The platform served municipalities handling legally sensitive case management processes, which required balancing usability improvements with regulatory integrity and technical constraints.
I acted as a bridge between user needs, business goals and engineering feasibility, ensuring design decisions supported long-term product scalability.
Description
Draftit is a web-based platform used by municipalities to manage supervision, inspections and complex regulatory case workflows.
The system handled large volumes of documentation, multi-step processes and cross-department collaboration. However, the user experience had grown fragmented over time. Inconsistent UI patterns, unclear prioritisation and workflow inefficiencies created cognitive load for case officers working daily in the system.
The challenge was not simply visual modernisation — it was to improve operational efficiency within a legally constrained environment, without disrupting existing processes relied upon by public sector users.
The objective became clear:
Improve clarity and decision-making support
Reduce friction in high-frequency workflows
Create scalable design patterns for long-term product evolution
Modernise the experience while respecting domain complexity
Platform
Web-based system.
Work done
My work included, User research and stakeholder interviews, mapping existing workflows and identifying bottlenecks, wireframing and prototyping new dashboard and case views, designing data visualisations and reporting components, creating reusable UI patterns and improving visual consistency and collaborating closely with developers during implementation
Timeframe
8 months
Final production
Final production
The outcome was a modernised and more cohesive platform experience that improved clarity without oversimplifying domain complexity.
The redesigned dashboard shifted from passive information display to actionable overview. Case officers gained clearer visibility into workload distribution, case status and prioritisation.
Navigation became more structured and predictable. Key workflows required fewer steps, and visual consistency reduced cognitive load across modules.
Most importantly, the platform became better aligned with how users actually worked, not just how the system was originally structured.
The process
I follow the Double Diamond method in my design process. This approach helps streamline and enhance creativity while ensuring all stakeholders remain informed and engaged throughout the project.
Discovery
The discovery phase focused on understanding the real operational reality of case officers.
Through workshops, stakeholder sessions and collaborative mapping exercises, we identified several systemic issues:
Users frequently navigated across multiple disconnected views to complete one task
Important status information lacked visual hierarchy
Dashboard metrics existed but did not effectively support decision-making
UI inconsistencies created unnecessary learning curves across modules
A key insight was that efficiency was less about speed and more about reducing mental overhead in complex legal workflows.
Define
In the define phase, we translated insights into clear strategic design principles:
Support decision-making, not just documentation
Minimise context switching within core workflows
Strengthen visual hierarchy to clarify priority and status
Design modular UI patterns to enable future scalability
Rather than focusing on isolated screens, we addressed structural issues, navigation logic, dashboard architecture and component consistency.
Low- and mid-fidelity prototypes were used to validate structural decisions early, ensuring alignment before investing in high-fidelity detail.
Finalization
During finalisation, emphasis shifted to system coherence and implementation precision.
I worked closely with developers to:
Align component logic with technical constraints
Ensure consistency across modules
Refine micro-interactions and feedback states
Maintain accessibility and clarity across data-heavy views
The final result was not just a visual refresh, but a structural improvement in how the platform supports daily case handling.
Strategic impact
This project strengthened the product foundation by:
Improving efficiency in high-frequency administrative workflows
Reducing cognitive load in legally complex processes
Establishing scalable UI patterns for future development
Elevating the platform from functional tool to structured decision-support system
It was a shift from reactive interface design to proactive product thinking — aligning user needs, business priorities and system architecture into a cohesive direction.