Context & the challenge
Bringing clarity to complexity
Background
The VHA Enrollment System supports over 9 million Veterans across the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States. The underlying system relied on legacy software architecture dating back to the 1990s.
Challenge
Enrolling in VA benefits involves interconnected rules across eligibility, service history, income limits, and priority group calculations. The legacy platform offered no guided workflows or task-based structure. VA staff were confronted with “walls of text” and dense forms. VA processors had to navigate across multiple screens based on memory or internal training docs to complete a single registration, resulting in manual data entry errors, accidental creation of duplicate records, and high administrative burden.
Stakeholder alignment
As Manager of Design, I established the UI/UX roadmap and product strategy in close coordination with VA business stakeholders, technical SMEs, and product owners. I structured alignment sessions to balance federal eligibility policies, legacy services and systems, and VA needs.
Research & discovery
Grounding the team in VA staff realities
In-person contextual inquiry
Led in-person observational site visits to VA facilities. Watched staff process enrollment applications live, uncovering workaround behaviors like opening saved emails or toggling between external tabs to complete routine tasks.
Key findings
- Search & duplication: Staff searched for Veterans using limited parameters; if a record wasn’t found immediately, they created a new one, leading to duplicate records.
- Lack of system guidance: Staff had to mentally calculate priority group eligibility based on disparate factors rather than the system guiding the evaluation.
- Manual data processing: Information like income verification was manually cross-checked with external systems like VFMP (Veteran and Family Member Program).
Centralized research
Established a centralized research repository to document findings, insights, and decision histories. This provided a single source of truth that bridged knowledge gaps between design, PMs, and engineering teams.
Design & execution
Architecting guided workflows with modern system design
Complex workflow and system diagramming
Mapped multi-layered decision trees to visualize how priority groups were calculated based on military experience, income, and service-connected status. Visualized high-level user flows for searching, record creation, and final registration.
Guided registration experience
Redesigned the registration interface into a linear, step-by-step guided workflow. Replaced fragmented legacy screens with clear hierarchy, distinct page sections, and persistent global application chrome (including a top record bar and intuitive side navigation).
Preventing errors at the UI layer
Introduced proactive record cross-checking into the search flow. If a Veteran isn’t found immediately, the system runs automated backend verification before allowing new record creation, preventing duplicate entry errors at the source.
Design and engineering collaboration
Built interactive, clickable Figma prototypes to align front-end/back-end engineers and business stakeholders on complex interaction states. Documented reusable UI design patterns to ensure consistency across micro interactions and streamline development sprints.
Leadership & Process
Bridging subcontractor, prime, and federal stakeholders
Multi-tier team leadership
Managed the UI/UX discipline across designers, researchers, and business analysts working within a multi-vendor structure. Our team was the subcontractor design team operating alongside a prime front-end engineering team and VA business/technical leads.
Design quality
Established design critique sessions and peer review processes to maintain high quality across all workflows, while mentoring junior designers and researchers.
Cross-functional collaboration
Served as the primary bridge between UI/UX and engineering teams, translating user research and accessibility requirements into technical user stories. Led stakeholder presentations to demo progress and align priorities with leadership.
Outcomes
Streamlined record creation
Transformed a fragmented legacy experience into an intuitive, guided workflow that speeds up processing time and reduces staff cognitive load. Created a record creation workflow that limited duplicate record creation.
Automated system integrations
Directly integrated income verification and external system data flows (e.g., VFMP), eliminating manual cross-checking and human error in eligibility determinations.
System agility & scalability
Partnered with engineering to align UI patterns with a modern microservices architecture, laying a foundation for future feature releases and system integrations.