CASE STUDY:
NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Secure
Role: Lead Product Designer
Timeline: ~6 Months
THE ORIGIN
The NGA project was the coordination of multiple specialized teams distributed across the nation and joining together to construct a sophisticated management system tailored to the specific needs of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). Our team was added weeks after other teams had made significant backend and some frontend progress. To merge seamlessly required quick adaptability and handshakes with the other teams.
THE PRODUCT VISION
The vision for the NGA Internal Management System was multifaceted. It centered on the creation of a comprehensive, user-centric, and secure platform. The challenge lay in creating a marriage of NGA’s graphical standards with Google Material design, a mid-stream workaround due to where other development teams had arrived prior to proper UX/UI guidance.
THE OUTCOME
Continued collaboration and positive progress toward achieving all of the client’s established goals and requirements continued throughout the project. We reached significant milestones and were arguably months ahead of schedule from a Product Design perspective. The client repeatedly expressed their gratitude and satisfaction with the design and development. They were especially complementary of my outside-the-box suggestions and insights. At the end of my tenure, I had established a comprehensive hand-off, including providing clearly-established visual standards, an accessible toolset, and easy-to-understand documentation.
Builder Interface — Mid-Resolution
Workflow Management — Mid-Resolution
Mission Pattern Builder — Mid-Resolution
Detail Modal — Mid-Resolution
THE PROCESS
Empathize: In addition to prospective user interviews, I dove deeply into NGA’s provided documentation, and took meticulous care to notes nuances in peripheral discussions during meetings and presentations to aid in empathizing with the NGA’s unique requirements.
Define: Revisiting past work on management systems provided valuable insights into the project’s scope. Understanding the legacy systems and recognizing opportunities for modernization proved invaluable.
Ideate: Though comprehensive collaboration with our team’s programmers and the client’s project managers, I sketched and refined initial interfaces, resulting in approved designs and the above-mentioned combined design system.
Prototype: I prototyped functionalities, from page expansions to data entry wizards, and any behaviors or functionality that wouldn’t be immediately apparent only viewing the static mockups.
Handoff/DX: Ensuring a smooth development process required maintaining meticulous documentation and preserving confidentiality. I regularly shared clearly-defined, organized, and annotated design documents with programmers and availed myself to provide needed clarifications and graphical adjustments.
Test: Iterative testing and usability feedback continued at every step of the process to ensure user-centricity and alignment with NGA’s evolving needs.
LEARNINGS & TAKEAWAYS
TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS
The NGA Mission Administration UI project required developing a robust, secure, and highly efficient interface for managing complex geospatial intelligence operations. We implemented a scalable design system that ensured consistency across multiple data-intensive workflows, optimized the UI for high-speed data retrieval, and integrated advanced visualization tools to enhance mission planning and execution.
USER-CENTRIC DESIGN
Given the critical nature of the NGA’s operations, the user experience had to prioritize clarity, speed, and precision. Through rigorous user research and testing, we designed an interface that streamlined mission administration while reducing cognitive load. The result was a UI that improved workflow efficiency and ensured mission-critical data was accessible and actionable in high-pressure environments.
STRATEGIC GROWTH
This project underscored the importance of balancing security, usability, and adaptability in high-stakes environments. By working closely with stakeholders, we developed a flexible system that could evolve alongside the agency’s needs. The experience reinforced the value of iterative design and cross-disciplinary collaboration in building enterprise-grade solutions for government and defense applications.