🦋 Dashboard Evolution

Overview

While supporting Business.NJ.gov, I led a series of incremental Dashboard improvements focused on helping up-and-running business owners more easily find, understand, and complete critical tasks. The work evolved over multiple sprints and emphasized small, data-informed itergations rather than a single large redesign.

  • My Role: Lead Product Designer
  • My Responsibilities: Research synthesis, UX strategy, interaction design, content collaboration, A/B testing support
  • Timeline: Multiple sprints over several quarters
  • The Team: Product manager, engineers, content strategists, researchers
  • Tools Used: Figma, Mural, Trymata, Dovetail, AI

Framing the Challenge

Problem

Up-and-running users landed on a Dashboard that contained valuable information, but lacked clear hierarchy and guidance, resulting in high cognitive load and difficulty identifying the most important actions.

Pain point #1

High-value tasks were visually deemphasized, competing with lower-priority content and making it difficult for users to identify what mattered most.

Pain point #2

The Dashboard’s primary entry point offered limited discoverability, relying on a basic dropdown that did not scale as tasks and content grew.

Pain point #3

Copy focused on features rather than the value users would gain, reducing clarity, confidence, and motivation to take action.

Hypothesis

By introducing a clearer visual and logical hierarchy paired with a more powerful search and value-driven copy, users would more quickly find and complete the tasks needed to operate their business.

Goal

Reduce cognitive load and help users immediately identify and act on the most valuable next steps from the Dashboard.

Process & Approach

Key contributions

  • Led discovery and alignment with new stakeholders to establish a shared problem statement.
  • Synthesized existing research, chat insights, and qualitative signals to identify where users were struggling most on the Dashboard.
  • Used early findings to help product and stakeholders align on a clear priority: improving how users find and access tasks.
  • Designed and iterated on a new Dashboard search experience that evolved from a simple dropdown into a robust, content-rich entry point.
  • Partnered closely with content and product to ensure designs could be managed and updated via CMS.

Discovery

  • Synthesized prior Dashboard research, chat analysis, and qualitative feedback to pinpoint recurring user friction.
  • Leveraged Dovetail AI to consolidate existing insights, ensuring past research directly informed decisions and avoided duplicated effort.
  • Identified a clear pattern: users arrived knowing they needed to take action, but not knowing where to start.
  • Led alignment sessions with product and stakeholders to translate insights into focused, actionable priorities.
  • Narrowed scope around Dashboard search as the highest-leverage improvement, balancing user needs, technical feasibility, and long-term scalability.
Virtual whiteboard capturing discovery insights and a shared problem statement for Dashboard improvements.

Design

  • Iteratively evolved the dropdown into a search-driven experience with categorized results over multiple quarters, informed by usability feedback and interaction analytics.
  • Introduced contextual sub-copy, clearer headings, and acronym-aware search to improve clarity and findability.
  • Refined visual hierarchy to emphasize high-engagement actions while intentionally de-emphasizing lower-impact content.
Iteration 1: Initial design showing all common tasks grouped within a single dropdown list.
Iteration 2: Dashboard update informed by usability research and analytics, introducing category-based wayfinding and refined copy.
Iteration 3: Iteration adding descriptive supporting copy under each task to improve clarity and content discovery.
Iteration 4: Final iteration informed by analytics, desk research, and A/B testing, refocusing copy on user value, replacing the dropdown with a search box, and adding a “Recommended for you” section based on profile settings.

Validation & Implementation

  • Supported A/B testing of value proposition copy to validate resonance with users.
  • Broke down designs into phased, sprint-sized increments to support Agile delivery and enable incremental implementation by engineering.
  • Partnered closely with engineering throughout implementation to ensure design intent, usability, and accessibility were preserved.

Challenges & Solutions

Challenge #1

Users felt overwhelmed by the amount of information on the Dashboard.

Solution #1

Introduced stronger visual hierarchy and progressive disclosure, surfacing the most relevant tasks first.

Challenge #2

The original dropdown limited discoverability and scalability.

Solution #2

Designed a flexible search component capable of supporting tasks, content, and future personalization.

Challenge #3

Content needed to change frequently without design or engineering rework.

Solution #3

Partnered with content and engineering to ensure key elements were CMS-controlled.

Outcomes

Deliverables

  1. Search-driven Dashboard entry experience with categorized results
  2. Iterative design assets informed by usability and interaction data
  3. A/B tested, value-focused copy
  4. Sprint-sized design breakdowns to support Agile delivery

Results

  • Improved discoverability of high-value tasks for returning business owners
  • Reduced cognitive load by clarifying hierarchy and next steps
  • Enabled faster iteration through shared, scalable Dashboard patterns

Key Takeaways & Learnings

Clarity Beats Completeness

Trying to show everything at once increased friction. Prioritizing hierarchy and guidance helped users act faster without adding new features.

Designing for Scale Requires Letting Go

As tasks grew, patterns that once worked no longer scaled. Evolving the entry point was necessary to support long-term growth.

Incremental Delivery Builds Stronger Products

Breaking a large improvement into phased, testable updates allowed the team to learn quickly and ship confidently over time.