USDA Economic Research Service · Internal tools

Making project health visible before the meeting starts.

I redesigned an internal project-management dashboard so distributed teams could understand status, risks, issues, milestones, and ownership at a glance—while working within federal accessibility requirements.

RoleUX Designer · Developer

TimelineAug 2024 — Apr 2025

ToolsFigma · Power BI

TeamERS Information Services

accessible internal tools

project health at a glance

Challenge Research Accessibility Design evolution Glow-up Validation Impact

01 · The challenge

The status meeting was doing the interface’s job.

The team needed a better way to track project progress and understand whether work was moving toward completion. The existing reporting approach depended on an outdated PDF-style format and recurring status meetings to surface information that should have been visible in the system itself.

I owned the UX and development work for the dashboard’s tracking experience, partnering closely with leadership and accessibility stakeholders to make sure the solution could work as a durable internal tool—not just a prettier report.

The goal was straightforward: make project health easy to understand before people entered the meeting.

Audience

30+

project managers and division leaders saw the final walkthrough.

Workflow impact

60→15

minutes in the approved weekly status-meeting format.

Design constraint

WCAG

accessibility guidance informed hierarchy, readability, and interaction decisions.

02 · Discovery

I studied the meeting, the tracker, and the people who had to use both.

The research was less about asking people what dashboard they wanted and more about understanding how project health was actually communicated—and where that communication broke down.

Observe

Weekly project meetings

I observed recurring Zoom sessions and relevant status conversations to understand how project managers reported progress, where information was repeated, and what leadership needed to know quickly.

Benchmark

Existing internal trackers

I reviewed practices used by the Agricultural Research Service, paying attention to update timestamps, milestone deadlines, ownership, and the signals teams used to judge whether a project was healthy.

Accessibility research

Beyond color and compliance

I reviewed WCAG guidance, consulted an accessibility specialist, and interviewed color-blind and low-vision employees to understand how clarity, contrast, labels, and navigability affected real use.

03 · Accessibility as a design input

The dashboard had to communicate status without asking users to decode it.

Accessibility was not a final QA pass. It shaped how I organized the information from the beginning.

Hierarchy before densityProject name, ownership, dates, completion, issues, risks, milestones, and deliverables were grouped into predictable regions instead of competing for attention.

Color supported the messageHealth indicators used visible labels alongside color so project state was not communicated by color alone.

Readable states and controlsActive, closed, and postponed states were designed as explicit controls with text labels rather than subtle visual changes.

Designed to stay currentThe goal was a flexible dashboard that could continue reflecting live project information instead of becoming another static artifact.

USDA project status dashboard with labeled navigation and project details

04 · Design evolution

I explored the overview and project-detail experience as one connected system.

These screens show multiple directions I worked through while improving hierarchy, status visibility, navigation, and the relationship between the portfolio-level overview and individual project health.

Structure first

Establishing the core information architecture: project count, risks, issues, resources, project ownership, dates, completion, and detailed status tables.

Project detail USDA project-detail dashboard direction 1

Portfolio overview USDA portfolio overview dashboard direction 1

05 · The dashboard glow-up

The redesign made the same project information easier to scan, compare, and act on.

Drag each divider to compare an earlier state with a more refined direction. The biggest change is not decoration—it is the hierarchy around the information people needed during project-health conversations.

Portfolio overview

From a sparse reporting canvas toward a more intentional dashboard with clearer grouping, stronger visual hierarchy, and more legible project-health signals.

Refined USDA portfolio overview dashboard

EarlierRefined

Project status view

From a dense, spreadsheet-like layout toward a more guided view that separates project context from issue, risk, accomplishment, and milestone details.

Refined high-contrast USDA project status dashboard direction

EarlierRefined

06 · Validation & stakeholder alignment

The final walkthrough focused on how the dashboard would change the meeting—not just the screen.

I presented annotated designs to project managers and division leaders, tied features back to observed user needs, and used the session to help stakeholders imagine a different operating rhythm.

30+

project managers & leaders

The presentation created space for questions, feedback, and discussion about how the tool would fit into day-to-day project management.

Show the health of the projectManagers could see completion, risks, issues, milestones, deliverables, and overdue work without reconstructing the story verbally.

Support a faster round-robinInstead of using the meeting to discover status, the dashboard could establish shared context before the conversation started.

Make exceptions visibleOverdue work and project-health concerns could become the focus of discussion rather than every team repeating a full update.

07 · What changed

The dashboard helped shift status reporting from a one-hour ritual to a 15-minute decision-focused check-in.

The team approved a transition from hour-long weekly meetings to a shorter round-robin format, using the dashboard to establish shared project context and reserve meeting time for the work that actually needed attention.

60 → 15 minutesThe approved weekly status-meeting format became dramatically shorter.

Self-serve project contextProject managers and leadership could review health, progress, and ownership without waiting for a verbal status update.

Accessibility built inFederal accessibility requirements and user research informed the design instead of being treated as an afterthought.

A more durable systemThe work moved project reporting away from a static PDF-style format toward a flexible dashboard that could stay current over time.

Reflection

The real redesign was not the dashboard. It was the conversation around project health.

The interface worked because it gave people the context they used to spend an hour assembling together. By combining workflow observation, accessibility research, visual hierarchy, and live project data, I could design a tool that changed both what people saw and how they used their time.