Fixing years of warehouse usability debt
Managers couldn't see bottlenecks forming until they'd already hit outbound. By then, rerouting wasn't an option.
Shipped the Merge Dashboard and Homepage as the sole designer on both
Before I could design anything on the Warehouse Operations platform, I needed to understand what was already broken. My first assignment was a full heuristic evaluation, documenting usability violations across the interface and giving the design team a shared baseline to work from. That audit shaped the UXQA work I drove across the team and directly informed the two dashboards I built from scratch: the Merge Dashboard and the Homepage.
Final screens are de-branded recreations. Honeywell NDA prevents showing real client data. This page covers the research process and design decisions behind the work.
The problem
By the time a manager knew there was a bottleneck in the Merge, it had already hit the outbound belts. At that point, rerouting wasn't an option. Throughput was already affected. The platform gave them no way to see problems forming upstream, and no clear starting point for understanding the overall state of the operation. On top of that, the interface they used every shift was fighting them: buttons with no affordances, unlabeled dropdowns, inconsistent typography, broken spacing. Usability issues that had accumulated over time and never been formally addressed.
The work
First assignment after joining was a full heuristic evaluation using Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics. Went through the entire platform and documented every violation: buttons with no affordances, unlabeled dropdowns, inconsistent typography, broken spacing. Presented findings to the design team. That audit became the shared baseline for all UXQA work that followed. For the Homepage, worked alongside a researcher to understand what managers actually needed when they opened the platform. Ran desk research, competitive reviews, and affinity mapping to figure out which KPIs and operational areas were most critical. Built and tested multiple iterations, validating content priority and layout with users at each step. After both dashboards shipped, drove UXQA across the platform: reviewing every implemented change to verify affordances, typography hierarchy, dropdown labels, spacing, and naming conventions were correctly applied. When most of the design team was out in January, volunteered to take on the KBA articles. Documented every flow in the platform: took screenshots at each step, wrote the content, and structured the taxonomy. Prioritized scannability: bullet points, visual steps, short sections so a manager could find what they needed without reading a manual.
Heuristic Evaluation
My first assignment at Honeywell was a full platform audit using Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics. I went through the entire interface and documented every violation: buttons with no affordances, unlabeled dropdowns, inconsistent typography, spacing issues. I presented the findings to the design team and it became the foundation for the UXQA work I drove across the platform.
Homepage: Research & Affinity Mapping
Before designing the Homepage I worked with a researcher to understand what managers actually needed when they opened the platform. We did desk research, competitive reviews, and affinity mapping to figure out which KPIs and operational areas were most critical. That research directly shaped the information hierarchy: what goes at the top, what gets flagged, what gets buried.
Homepage: Design Iterations
I built and tested multiple Homepage iterations, going back to users at each step to validate content priority and layout. The goal was a single starting point where a manager could immediately understand the state of their operation: what's healthy, what needs attention, and where to find help.
Key design decisions
Diagnose before designing
The platform had years of usability debt. Jumping into new design work on a surface I didn't understand would have compounded the existing problems.
First assignment was a full heuristic evaluation before touching any new design work. Documented every violation across the platform and presented findings to the design team.
You can't fix what you haven't named. The audit gave the team a shared language for what was broken and a baseline to measure fixes against. The UXQA process that followed only worked because the violations were documented upfront.
Design for the moment before the problem
By the time a manager knew there was a bottleneck in the Merge, it had already hit the outbound belts. Rerouting wasn't possible at that point.
Designed the Merge Dashboard around upstream visibility: asset status and lane performance across the Merge in real time, before issues reached outbound.
A dashboard that shows you a problem you can't act on isn't a solution. The value of the Merge Dashboard was giving managers the window to reroute before throughput was already affected.
Research before guessing content priority
The Homepage had to surface the right KPIs and operational areas immediately. Guessing what managers looked for first would have produced the wrong hierarchy.
Ran desk research, competitive reviews, and affinity mapping with a researcher before designing anything. Used findings to set content priority: what goes at the top, what gets flagged, what gets buried.
Managers open the platform at the start of every shift. The first thing they see either orients them immediately or makes them dig. Research, not assumption, determined what that first thing was.
Reflection
The most underrated part of this work was the UXQA. Running a heuristic evaluation is straightforward. Following up to verify that every fix was correctly implemented: the right affordance applied, the label matching the spec, the spacing consistent. That takes persistence and doesn't show up in a portfolio. It's also what actually moves the needle on a platform with years of debt. The audit is the diagnosis. The UXQA is the treatment.