Control App Redesign
Overview
An internal engineering tool was about to reach external users. I led its redesign under a tight timeline, restructuring navigation and bringing it onto the design system, while setting up a new dev team to keep building on their own.
Focus
Accessibility
Year
2026
Read
4 min
Status
A short look at the redesigned Control App. It's under NDA, so this is a sneak peek with sensitive data anonymized. The case focuses on process, information architecture, and how I worked with the team.
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The context
Overview
Control App is a web interface for controlling and monitoring power converters. It began as an internal tool, built by the engineering team without a designer, where making it work mattered more than making it usable. It had never touched the company design system, because it had never needed to.
That changed when the business decided to open it to external users. They would use it across a range of roles and workflows, on-site from a laptop being just one. A rough internal tool suddenly had to work for far more people than it was built for.
It also didn't stand alone. Control App sat inside a wider ecosystem of tools: some it would absorb, some it would replace, some it had to keep working alongside. Part of the job was designing one app while making sense of the system around it.
Process & collaboration
The work started with a kickoff with the PM and PO, and the mandate had two halves: open the tool to external users, and understand the full set of workflows behind it. I structured the work to do both at once. Development got an early foundation to build on, while research and a deeper audit ran in parallel and kept feeding the design.
Phase 1 · Framing and rapid audit
To ground the project in reality, I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with four system specialists, mapping their daily workflows to identify missing functionalities.
The research revealed a significant friction point: finding and comparing signals within deeply nested asset hierarchies was overly complex. This friction disrupted workflows, forcing analysts into highly inefficient processes just to complete their analysis.
title
Outcome & trade-offs
Tight timelines meant hard prioritization. Here is what made it in, and what I consciously left for later.
Delivered
Navigation and IA, rebuilt. More than 13 ungrouped tabs became a clear, grouped structure, derived from card sorting with domain experts. The controls that used to float over the screen and block the view were gathered into the second level of the navigation, as a dedicated toolbar for the device actions people actually needed. [A before / after of the navigation can sit here.]
The app, on the design system. For the first time, Control App met the company's design-system baseline: brand colors, navigation with the logo, correct typography, consistent button behavior, and baseline accessibility. I reviewed the build as it shipped to keep all of it consistent, down to proper light and dark modes designed for on-site conditions.
A working setup for the dev team. Documented components, the missing UI pieces they needed, accessibility guidance, and a handoff process they could run without me.
A shared picture of the product. A service blueprint that gave the team the wider context they had been missing.
Future plans
External user research. With the timeline tight and me rotating to another project, interviews with the new external users moved to a later phase.
Deeper workflow polish. I focused on the critical paths and redesigned several of them end to end. Less-used flows were carried into the new UI, but their fuller redesign was left as clearly marked next steps.
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Impact
1
Continuity
The dev team came out onboarded and already building alongside me, with documented components and a handoff that let them carry the redesign forward after I rotated off.
2
Readiness
The tool now meets the design-system and accessibility standards it needed before going external, with several core workflows redesigned .
3
Clarity
A vague, urgent brief became a grouped navigation, a mapped product picture, and a plan the team could keep scaling from.
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What I took from it
This project ran on constraints: no full discovery up front, a new team, an urgent deadline. That made the design work inseparable from leading it. Starting before the picture was complete, keeping development moving, and getting a new team fluent in the design system.
What stuck with me is that the highest-leverage thing I did was not drawing screens. It was creating enough order and direction for everyone else to build well without me. A lot of senior design is quiet work that clears the way for other people.