YUJ Designs
2025
Over a year, I worked as a UX Designer on a service and project management tool for a nonprofit that connects young people with education and job opportunities. Field staff, program managers, and leadership all worked out of different spreadsheets and chat threads. We brought that work into one platform where each role sees what it needs.
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
May 2024 – May 2025
Team
3 UX Designers, 2 VX Designers, 4 Developers
Platform
Web application with mobile field flows
Overview
One organization, ten plus roles, no shared view of the work.
The nonprofit takes young people through a long journey: outreach, enquiry, training, and job placement. Every step was tracked by hand across disconnected tools. We designed a platform around permissions and roles that replaced those legacy processes. Field staff can log updates on the spot, managers can see where each young person stands, and leadership can track targets in real time.
The Impact
+20%
Better usability
IA rebuilt with card sorting
20+
User interviews
Across 10 roles
100+
High-fidelity screens
Across 15+ business flows
Problem
Young people were falling through the cracks because no one could see the whole picture.
Each day ran on disconnected spreadsheets, phone calls, and messaging apps. No one clearly owned each task, so planning was always reactive. Follow-ups slipped. Data gaps only showed up at the yearly documentation review, long after they could be fixed. Leadership was setting donor targets without knowing where the program actually stood.
01
Scattered data
The same details lived in many sheets and chats, so no one version could be trusted as the source of truth.
02
Unable to prioritize
Nowhere showed what mattered and when, so urgent follow-ups got lost among routine tasks.
03
Workflow friction
Seeing a young person’s history or journey took extra steps, calls, and double-checking before anyone could act.
Research
Before designing anything, we listened to every role.
To find where friction was worst, we interviewed the people who manage teams, data, and young people every day. We interviewed at least three people in every role. We looked at how they found information, how they understood a young person’s context, and how they worked around their current tools.
20+ interviews (10 roles)
From leadership and senior management to field staff.
60 mins
Each session had 1–2 interviewers and a note-taker.
Semi-structured interviews
We covered what worked and what didn’t in current tools, and what people expected from a new system.
What we learned: the gaps between tools were the real problem.
We grouped the interview notes by role: the work each person does, the problems they face, and what they want and need. Then we combined those into high-level problem statements and brainstormed recommendations for each one. Across every role, the same pattern kept showing up. People spent their time moving information between tools instead of acting on it.
Key insights
The same data was typed into many sheets. Filling in and checking the same data again and again took the most time and created the most errors.
With so many calls, staff entered everything once the calls were done. Errors only came to light at the yearly review.
Without a shared overview, people spent their time chasing updates. Constant reminders and one-off data requests from stakeholders delayed work and hid what needed attention first.
Every interaction had to be documented, but nothing linked it together. Each time asked young people for different details at different times, and nothing connected them into one history.
We are told about the budget only when it goes overboard, and then we have to change our outreach plan or spend from our own pockets, especially for the mega events and important months
Interview participant
Understanding the user journey
We mapped the whole workflow, across every tool and user group, to find where effort was duplicated and handoffs broke down. That map became the blueprint for one connected flow: capture the data once, make decisions with context, and review status in one place.
Testing the information hierarchy before a single polished screen
Before high fidelity, we tested navigation and grouping with card sorting. These quick sessions confirmed how people expected information to be organized. The information architecture that came out of them made the product 20% more usable.
Ideation
Deciding what each role should see first
I explored several dashboard directions. Each one grouped information differently, simplified navigation, and made a young person’s journey visible at a glance. The question behind all of them was the same: how quickly can someone in this role see what needs them today?
Different dashboard concepts, each focused on hierarchy, visibility, and clearer everyday tasks.
01
Focused overview
A simple top-level summary that puts priority tasks and key numbers first.
02
Modular layouts
Flexible dashboard blocks to test grouping, spacing, and hierarchy for different amounts of content.
03
Task-oriented flows
A layout built around the tasks each person and team repeats, rather than around data categories.
Solutions
Several features that turned scattered work into one connected system. Each feature addresses a pain point from research: entering data twice, follow-ups getting lost, or leadership making calls without data.
Role-based dashboards put each person’s priorities in plain sight.
Each user gets a snapshot of their tasks, what’s coming up, and their progress. Action cards help them plan the day or week, with deadlines surfaced before they’re missed.
A visual pipeline makes every young person’s stage visible to all.
Tabbed stages trace each young person’s journey through the program. Teams move people forward step by step, and every department can see their live status.
Journey records gather every call, form, and walk-in in one place.
Each young person has one record of their outcomes, follow-ups, and every detail collected along the way. It gives staff the context to offer personal support and makes it clear who is accountable.
Target monitoring replaces leadership’s guesswork with live data.
Leadership tracks performance against monthly and quarterly targets by team, stage, or person. Color coding flags gaps early, and staff reviews are based on data rather than memory.
Opportunity matching shows the options that fit best.
Opportunity requirements sit next to each young person’s profile, with recommendations based on their history, preferences, and progress in the program. This makes allocation decisions quicker and better informed.
Bulk actions replace hours of one-by-one status updates.
Attendance, application status, and stage changes can be updated for many people at once, which saves hours of repetitive manual entry every week.
Key outcomes
One source of truth
Spreadsheets, calls, and messages were replaced by one platform, which cut duplicate entry and manual errors.
Clearer ownership
Role-based dashboards and action cards made it obvious who was doing what, and when.
Visible journeys
Every young person's progress became trackable from outreach to placement.
Data-driven leadership
Real-time target monitoring replaced guesswork in reviews and planning.
Lessons
Adoption depends on trust as much as usability.
This project showed me that a well-structured system still has to earn a place in people’s routines. The teams had been managing through spreadsheets and calls for years. The design only worked because it respected those habits and showed, clearly, how the new tool made their work easier.
What I’d tell my future self
How you advocate for a design matters as much as the design.
Presenting clearly and speaking up for decisions made all the difference in whether the client adopted the work.
Speak the client's language.
Understand their context and their hesitations, and show how the design makes their work easier, not harder.
Design for familiarity first.
Respect what users already know, and move them to better systems through gradual, intuitive steps.
