UX Review for a Road Design Application
UX Manager | Strategic Oversight | Stakeholder Management | Texas Department of Transportation
Project Overview
Our IT division developed an internal application based on user needs, but without any UX/UI involvement. As a result, the application lacked consistency, usability, and accessibility considerations. Our team conducted a lightweight heuristic review to identify major usability issues and areas where small design improvements could create the biggest impact. Additionally, we provided a high-fidelity mockup to align the application with our digital design system and improve overall user experience.
The Challenge
The application was built without UX/UI guidance, leading to:
Inconsistent UI elements not aligned with our design system
Usability issues affecting navigation, form inputs, and workflows
Accessibility gaps, making the application less perceivable and operable
No structured approach to UI decisions, making it difficult to scale
My role
As the UX Manager, I played a leadership role in both mentoring and stakeholder management:
Mentorship – Guided the Senior UX/UI Designer, providing input on heuristic evaluation findings and design decisions.
Stakeholder Management – Ensured we set clear expectations with IT, avoiding overcommitment while balancing our team’s bandwidth.
Strategic Oversight – Focused on high-impact, low-effort improvements to make the application more usable without requiring a full redesign.
Our Approach
Heuristic Review – Evaluated the app against usability principles, capturing issues with screenshots and notes.
Design Recommendations – Created a high-fidelity mockup to demonstrate a more user-friendly layout and UI improvements.
Stakeholder Collaboration – Shared findings and recommendations with IT leadership and development teams.
Key Decision & Outcome
The development team agreed to use our high-fidelity mockup as a reference for a future release, though the timeline and level of adherence are uncertain.
Our work established a baseline for UX involvement in IT projects, reinforcing the need for early UX collaboration.
Before
After
Impact & Next Steps
While we don’t yet have improvement data, this review set a precedent for UX/UI engagement in future IT projects. We will continue advocating for UX integration earlier in the development lifecycle to prevent usability issues before they arise.