Helping state citizens navigate life, learning, and career with confidence.
Led end-to-end UX strategy for a multi-statewide platform helping state citizens plan careers and education—with scalable design systems, guided journeys, and measurable impact.
Results
I led UX design for both the Colorado and Virginia versions of this platform, which was white-labeled for multiple state use and adapted to meet each region’s unique goals and audiences.
Process
Card sorting, tree testing, contextual interviews, usability testing, rapid prototyping, A/B testing
Outcomes
>30,000 Colorado and 50,000 Virginia citizens use this platform today
Gained contracts from governments of Colorado, Hawaii, and Virginia
Client
Colorado Government
Role
Leading end-to-end strategy, research, design
Timeline
10 months
Project Overview
I led UX design for a white-labeled, multi-state digital platform that helps users navigate life-changing decisions around education, career, and workforce development. This platform was launched in both Colorado and Virginia, each with tailored adaptations to meet the unique needs of their diverse user bases and stakeholders.
My work spanned user research, strategy, information architecture, and UI design, with a focus on creating scalable, accessible journeys that could flexibly serve multiple regions while maintaining a cohesive experience.
Startup PAIRIN identified an opportunity in the government space to provide a streamlined and accessible experience for state citizens to access state-funded resources. I was hired to lead design, research, and strategy as PAIRIN's first designer.
Over the first few weeks, I led numerous stakeholder, subject matter expert, and user workshops and interviews to understand business and user needs.
I also created extensive research artifacts to reference about our target audience and our product market fit.
I then created personas for us to better empathize with user needs. Our personas were split into two main use cases-individuals (anyone using My Colorado Journey on their own behalf) and professionals (anyone using My Colorado Journey on behalf of another individual).
After compiling industry research and considering SME, user, and business needs, I led whiteboard brainstorming design sessions with my team.
I created user flows for demonstrating how users can create a profile and navigate a wide array of government job and education resources.
I collaborated on an information architecture sitemaps with engineering to iron out edge cases and to give engineering back-end architecture to work on.
I then sketched and hi-fi wireframed two sets of design directions to prepare for stakeholder and SME feedback as well as A/B testing with users.
I made modifications to the design mockups based on guerilla research and feedback.
As we got closer to production, I led design of branding and a design system for a sustainable and extensible product. I also designed a physical brochure for the CEO to use during a pitch meeting to other state governments in D.C.
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I then worked with engineering on handing off the front end designs. Due to a small engineering team, we had to limit our scope but because I included engineering on the back-end architecture months prior, we still got a surprising amount done in a short time.
First, a person enters www.MyColoradoJourney.com, a marketing website that describes the product.
Second, the person creates a profile with the My Colorado Journey system and enters their information.
Lastly, My Colorado Journey recommends job and education resources which are specifically relevant to them. The user can then save these resources in their personal "My Journey" timeline.
Outcomes
Helping citizens today and tomorrow
More than 30,000 Colorado citizens use the My Colorado Journey platform today to seek job and education resources in rural and urban schools and workforce centers.
National reach
The work we did on My Colorado Journey led us to gaining similar contracts from governments of Colorado, Hawaii, and Virginia. I even led design on a Virginia white-labeled counterpart that serves their unique population.