From MVP Chaos to Scalable Excellence: Elevating UX for FORCE Platform
When I joined the FORCE team in late 2025, the tool had just launched and was already delivering real value at Charter. The team was growing fast. Our single scrum team swelled from 15 to 40 people almost overnight, then split into three separate scrum teams. As the only designer supporting all three, the scope was massive. But two weeks after I started, layoffs struck. The other Senior UX Designer and our Junior Designer were let go, leaving me as the sole designer. I quickly hired a new Junior to help share the load, only for him to leave the company after three weeks. Through the instability, and rapid expansion I kept momentum alive and helped FORCE evolve from a promising but rough MVP into one of Charter’s most essential and heavily used internal platforms which is powering the company’s next phase of network modernization.
COMPANY
Spectrum (Charter Communications)
Industry
Telecom & Mass Media
Project name
FORCE (Framework for Orchestration, Resource Control, and Efficiency)
Timeframe
SEPT 2025 - MAR 2026
Scope of work
Stack
Discovery
Understanding the App
In my first weeks on the FORCE team, I held in-depth sessions with engineers, product managers, and business analysts to deeply understand the application and its domain.
Critical Conversion Point
FORCE: Automating RPD Lifecycle at Massive Scale
FORCE’s primary mission is to automate RPD activation, onboarding, configuration, and lifecycle management at massive scale.
The Problem with Activating RPDs
Before FORCE, activation was slow and costly. On-site technicians called Regional Operations Centers to reach agents who manually guided troubleshooting, configuration, and system updates. Long holds, repeated explanations, and agent-led steps caused major delays, bringing about significant labor costs each night. FORCE eliminates these problems by automating key onboarding and activation steps, letting technicians to scan, configure, and activate devices via mobile or web with minimal back and forth. This saves time, decreases errors, and significantly lowers costs.
User Research
Discovering Who Really Uses FORCE
To design FORCE effectively, I met with team leads, requested direct user contacts, and conducted video interviews with stakeholders and end users. This research distilled two primary personas that shaped every major decision in the redesign and new features. For example, because some users work overnight, we implemented a dark mode feature to reduce eye strain.
UX Audit
Uncovering the Hidden Debt: Why the MVP Foundation Was Cracking Under Growth
The design system lacked structure and scalability. Colors were disconnected local styles with manual light and dark variants. There was no true component library as a single source of truth. Auto layout was rarely used, resulting in brittle, non-responsive layouts with no support for split-screen or ultra-wide views.
Developer Handoff
Documenting the System: A Reference Built for Engineers
To make the design system easy to adopt and implement correctly, I created a detailed style guide documenting the specifications and interaction patterns for FORCE's core components. Covering buttons, input fields, and other frequently used elements, the guide defines exact sizing, shape, states, and usage rules, for example, when to use a primary versus tertiary button, or how destructive actions should be visually distinguished from standard ones. This gave engineers a clear, unambiguous reference for implementation, reducing back-and-forth and ensuring the system was applied consistently across the growing FORCE codebase.
File Management and Team Scalability
After layoffs left me as the only designer on the team, I took full ownership of reorganizing the Figma project to boost efficiency and make it sustainable long-term. I restructured the tabs in Final Wireframes to match the FORCE web app's navigation exactly, so every page became instantly findable. To fix performance and reduce bloat, I split content into dedicated files: • Archives: old versions and legacy designs • Prototypes and Screen Variants • Team Resources: central hub linking to assets and information These changes cut file size dramatically, sped up workflows, and created a clean, scalable structure that supports onboarding new designers with zero friction.
New Features
Global Search Feature
Users across roles frequently requested a faster way to locate devices, locations, and jobs within the FORCE platform, especially given the scale of the network and volume of ongoing workflows. I took ownership of designing and delivering this high-impact feature. I placed a prominent search field in the center of the top navigation bar for maximum visibility and accessibility. To the right of the field, I added a command K hotkey indicator for keyboard-first users and an info icon that reveals a hover tooltip explaining search syntax and tips. Future enhancements are planned to include category-free universal search, recent search history, and autocomplete suggestions to further speed up common tasks.
New Features
Add a Device Workflow
One of the most frequently requested capabilities from network engineers and ANO operators was a streamlined way to add new RPDs to the system. Before this feature, the process involved manual configuration cloning via CLI or scattered tools, which was time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to audit. I designed the "Add a Device" workflow as a guided, multi-step wizard to make onboarding safe, consistent, and efficient. The flow starts by letting users choose one of three entry points: • Clone an Existing RPD • Copy a Test RPD • Greenfield RPD
Job History Column and Timeline
Leaders and operators lacked traceability in FORCE workflows: jobs like activations and campaigns often failed and got retriggered without a clear record of who did what, when, slowing troubleshooting. I designed a Job History column and timeline for key detail pages, providing a chronological, auditable log of who initiated each job, timestamps, and key events like failures, retriggers, interventions, and rollbacks. The result is a cleaner layout with color-coded status, expandable details, and full visibility into job lifecycles, improving debugging, audit compliance, and reducing clutter.
AI Chatbot
Design Process and Features
How research, collaboration, and intentional design decisions came together to shape the FORCE chatbot.
AI Chatbot Demonstration
Retrospective
Lessons from Solo Leadership: What I Learned Turning FORCE Around
This project was my most challenging UX leadership experience to date. It demonstrated how foundational design work can unlock significant operational scale in enterprise settings.
