In a two year engagement, I completely redesigned the user interface for the Portal Server Admin console - a large web application. The first generation web UI was a tab based, feature centric solution. In the new design I pivoted to a task centric approach. Many of the tasks were related to the initial set and subsequent editing and maintenance of intranet portal pages. I designed these flows to occur in a canvas style UI where users saw a wireframe view of the pages as end users would see. Tasks of adding, hiding, editing or debugging pages or modules now happened in this context. In the second design iteration, we were able to bring in more AJAX enabled features such as drag and drop.

The designs were well received by end users and the user experience was positioned as a competitive advantage.

This work was completed between 2004 and 2006. The design work for the first version was completed when the earliest web applications (zoho, gmail) were making their debut. The work for the second round of designs was inspired by the additional capabilities that the emergence of AJAX afforded web applications. So we were leveraging patterns and capabilities as they emerged, and building new patterns that met our needs and utilized new capabilities that the evolution in web front end technology had made possible.