Redesigned a high-friction enterprise workspace for geoscience operations teams to accelerate cloud adoption, reduce cognitive load, and improve day-to-day usability.

At a Glance

• Domain: Enterprise SaaS (Geoscience / Oil & Gas)

• Timeline: 24 months

• Team: Product, Design, Engineering, Domain SMEs

My role & scope

• Led end-to-end UX strategy for workspace redesign

• Owned workflow simplification, layout prioritization, and validation plan

• Partnered with PM + Engineering for rollout and instrumentation

Responsibilities included:

• Planning and conducting user research with domain experts

• Defining workflows and information architecture

• Leading design exploration and iteration

• Collaborating with Product Managers and Engineers

• Driving usability validation and incorporating feedback

• Aligning design decisions with business and technical constraints

Problem

Cloud migration was stalled because core tasks required a complex, high-friction workflow (~21 clicks), reducing discoverability and daily usage.

Issues in the existing interface

Outcome

• Reduced task completion from 21 → ~3 clicks

• +67% increase in active product adoption

• +80% increase in user satisfaction

• Enabled onboarding of ~3,000 new enterprise users

My Contributions

• UX strategy

• Workflow simplification

• Screen redesign

• Validation

Business Context

The platform was a mission-critical enterprise workspace used by geoscience operations teams for daily decisions, app access, and project workflows.

Despite business push for cloud adoption, usage remained flat due to complexity in core user journeys.

Core challenge : A High-Friction Barrier to Cloud Migration

The legacy experience created high cognitive load and unnecessary navigation depth.
Even basic actions required multiple context switches, making the system feel slow and difficult to use.

Despite feature richness, user engagement was low because:

• Users struggled to quickly resume previous work

• Navigation was tool-driven rather than workflow-driven

• High cognitive load led to slower task completion and frustration

This directly impacted adoption, retention, and onboarding scalability.

Constraints

The redesign had to work within legacy technical dependencies, role-based complexity, and enterprise reliability needs.

We needed measurable usability gains without disrupting mission-critical workflows.

What happens if we solve these problems?

Approach

Mapped high-frequency journeys, identified major friction points, and prioritized interventions by expected user and business impact.

We believe

1. The VM start along with user login will reduce time to access work

2. The 1st thing users want to see after landing is their most recent work, and apps

3. Providing users the control to launch application will simplify their main workflow

4. Letting users know about product and application updates will help in building trust

5. Users need technical control on demand and not always

The design direction focused on faster first actions, clearer hierarchy, and lower interaction overhead.

Research & Discover

Methods

• 1:1 interviews with professional geologists

• Workflow walkthroughs and contextual inquiry

• Review of product usage data and support tickets

• Collaboration with internal domain experts

Interaction with Users:

Persona

Key Research insights:

Representative user voices (synthesis from interviews)

Problem Statement

How might we help geologists quickly resume and manage ongoing work without increasing cognitive load or disrupting existing workflows?

This framing aligned both user needs and business goals around efficiency, adoption, and satisfaction.

Design Principles

Based on research, I defined these guiding principles:

1. Resume over rediscover
   Help users continue work instantly rather than navigate tools.

2. Task-first, not tool-first
   Organize the interface around what users are doing, not features.

3. Reduce cognitive load
   Minimize decisions required before meaningful action.

4. Respect domain complexity
   Simplify workflows without oversimplifying professional needs.

Key Decisions

Decision 1 — Prioritize recent work visibility

Why
Users consistently expressed frustration with finding their last active datasets.

Solution

• Introduced a “Recent Work” section as the primary entry point

• Enabled users to resume tasks in a single interaction

I surfaced recent projects and key actions upfront to reduce time-to-task and improve re-engagement.

Decision 2 — Reduce click depth (21 → 3)

Why
Deep hierarchies increased time-to-task and cognitive load.

Solution

• Reduced technical complexities and depth - "we did a cross functional workshop with Engg to figure out how"

• Removed secondary decisions where possible

Decision 3 — Prioritize high-frequency actions in the layout

I reorganized the workspace so the most frequent actions appear first—recent projects, app access, and session controls.
This reduced search time, lowered cognitive load, and helped users complete core tasks faster.

Decision 4 — Improve system-state visibility

Users lost confidence when status signals were unclear.
I introduced clear indicators for health/state to improve trust and reduce uncertainty during execution.

Trade-offs & Prioritization

To maximize adoption impact within delivery constraints, I prioritized high-frequency workflows and deferred lower-frequency enhancements to future iterations.

• Prioritized core daily flows over long-tail edge cases for v1

• Deferred advanced personalization to reduce implementation complexity

• Balanced speed and clarity by using progressive disclosure instead of adding more controls on first view

Validation

Usability validation showed higher task success and lower assisted completion after redesign.
Users completed core actions faster with fewer errors and lower perceived effort.

Business Impact

The redesign converted a flat adoption trend into measurable growth.
It improved both user experience and business outcomes in a short post-launch window.

• Within 6 months, our team onboarded ~3,000 new customers.

• +67% increase in active product adoption

• +80% increase in user satisfaction

• 21 → ~3 clicks in core workflow execution

Final Shipped Experience

The final workspace reduced friction while preserving enterprise-grade capability.
It enabled faster onboarding, clearer actions, and more confident daily usage.

What I’d Improve Next

• Personalize workspace modules by role and frequency of use

• Add guided in-product onboarding for first-week success

• Expand instrumentation to track retention by workflow type

This redesign proved that simplifying enterprise workflows can directly drive adoption, satisfaction, and scalable growth.