SYSTEMIC ARCHITECTURE & TASK MANAGEMENT
Company: Workiva
Project: Redesign Foundational Workflow Frameworks
Impact: 90% Reduction in Operational Support Costs
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Strategic Challenge
The legacy Task Management workflow forced users to manage both the underlying data (Values) and workflow actions (Tasks) in a single, high-friction interface — the "Metric View." This caused confusion, mistakes, and a high volume of support calls, making the system frustrating to use and costly to support.
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The goal was clear: separate the workflow from the data to create a coherent, efficient experience that users could understand and trust.
Staff Leadership & Cross-functional Influence
I wasn’t executing a single feature — I led a systemic redesign that addressed the root cause of the problem.
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Coordinated with Product and Engineering to pivot the architecture, agreeing that a UI facelift wouldn’t fix the underlying confusion.
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Aligned across overlapping projects to ensure changes stayed coherent with the platform and didn’t break dependent workflows.
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Sequenced design work around the larger Multidimensionality project, maintaining consistency while the backend evolved.
Systemic Architecture & Foundational Frameworks
The solution was to decouple the workflow from the data, creating two dedicated views:
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Values View: Focused solely on managing and auditing underlying data.
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Tasks View: Focused entirely on workflow, bulk actions, and team management.
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This separation gave users clear mental models for both workflows, reducing cognitive load and enabling efficient bulk actions.
The Focused Values View. This view is now dedicated to data inputs and auditing (e.g., 'Add values', 'Edit value'), minimizing cognitive load for data owners.
The Focused Tasks View. This view is dedicated to workflow management (e.g., 'Manage task', 'Send', 'Complete'). This structural separation enabled efficient bulk actions and eliminated ambiguity.
Legacy vs. New Experience
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Old Metric View: Users had to manage Tasks, Approvals, and Metric Values in a single, cramped interface — causing mistakes and high support call volume.
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New Create Task View: Workflow is now isolated. Users assign tasks, approvers, and due dates without worrying about data entry. All value inputs moved to the dedicated Values View.
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Result: The decoupling eliminated confusion, improved efficiency, and directly led to a 90% drop in related support calls.
The legacy experience was limited and confusing, forcing users into a confusing and ineffective workflow.
New Create Task View
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Architectural Pivot: Decoupled workflow from data, creating separate, focused mental models for the user.
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Result: The Create Task dialog now handles only workflow — assignment fields (Assignee, Approver, Due Date) are clearly separated from value selection.
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Systemic Coherence: Moving data entry to the dedicated Values View eliminated ambiguity, made workflows straightforward, and enabled efficient bulk actions — directly contributing to the 90% drop in support calls.
The new Create Task dialog is dedicated solely to assignment and adding values workflow.
Strategic Impact & Forward Planning
The architectural redesign resulted in a 90% reduction in support calls related to Task Management and Value input. This result was achieved by eliminating the high-friction environment of the legacy system (shown right) where users were forced to manage Task Assignment, Approval, and Metric Value input simultaneously. The new, decoupled Foundational Framework solved the systemic ambiguity, transforming an operational cost center into an efficient workflow.
This redesign didn’t just solve an immediate problem — it laid the foundation for future features, like bulk task creation and the eventual deprecation of complex scripts.
It demonstrates the ability to diagnose systemic flaws, drive cross-team alignment, and deliver measurable business and user impact — the core of Staff-level design leadership.