The challenge

The system ran on an out-of-the-box product, which came with a lot of functionality and logic nobody needed. Many flows, such as creating a new article, had unnecessary steps or extra buttons and logic that didn't help the user. From the start, the main design goal was to make the system intuitive by removing everything the product didn't need.

That made simplification the big topic, though not in the usual sense of stripping the interface down to as few elements as possible. I aimed for every flow to have only the steps needed to finish the task. The system behind the screen is complicated, and that's fine, but users shouldn't have to experience all of it. Steps that repeated with the same information every time were automated, because they only cost people time.

Many processes were complex, so I drew process models and journey maps. Creating a new article, for example, involves several user steps, internal and external database connections, validation and more. The journey maps helped me pick the best solution when I iterated on options with AI tools in Figma.

Key decisions

• What stays and what goes. The product had lots of functionality users didn't need, but we couldn't just remove it all. Each item was evaluated separately and where possible checked with users.

• Logic before looks. I believe a good experience needs both good visuals and good logic, but sometimes you have to choose. The existing solution had many building blocks, so we first made the processes logical, fixed the information hierarchy and removed what wasn't needed. Then moved on to contrast, colors and text styles.

• Managing priorities. With many problems, prioritizing is key: what comes first, and what is business critical? This mattered even more once I took on project management too.

The results

In over a year of work, the visuals and experience have changed significantly. Almost all user-facing views have been redesigned, including the dashboard, article creation, detail views and user management. Managing articles and adding new ones is more intuitive now with unnecessary friction and functionality removed. There are still many flows and views in different stages of design and development to be fixed.

Next steps

The project is ongoing. A major next step is moving from the existing design system to TEDI, the Estonian government design system, and exploring other options to ease workflows.