Reducing Admin Overhead by 75% through Unified Identity

ℹ️ This project is under NDA. I'd be happy to share the full story during an interview!

Project Summary

  • Led the design of a unified authentication and access management experience for a global networking client

  • Collaborate cross-product and cross-team to align functionality from across feature areas

  • Navigate legacy technical constraints.

Impact

  • Consolidated 75% of account systems into one single ecosystem

  • Designed modular UI that functions as a Micro-Frontend (MFE) or a standalone portal to meet diverse technical needs.

  • Established automated self-service user set up to accelerate future product integrations and reduce long-term engineering overhead.

Role
Product Designer working with 2 product designers

Tools
Figma, Jira, Confluence, Webex

Timeline
6 Quarters

The Problem
Managing dozens of disconnected platforms created a massive operational burden for IT admins.

  • Manual, redundant setup cycles turned routine onboarding into a multi-hour operational drain

  • Disconnected platforms compromised security, making universal standards nearly impossible to enforce.

  • Fragmented systems inflated costs through extensive staff training and constant IT support reliance.

  • Lack of self-service user management tools forced an expensive, unnecessary reliance on support teams.

The Challenge
Navigating deep technical complexity and organizational friction at scale.

  • Conflicting product priorities to deliver designs and establish standards during a high-pressure build phase.

  • Steep learning curve for IAM and adopting a new design system under an aggressive timeline.

  • Coordinate with development team across global time zones for rapid turnaround of new features

  • Bridge the gap between engineering constraints and cohesive design.

The Process
Transforming a disconnected IAM ecosystem into a 'single pane of glass'.

  • Interviewed product teams to resolve ambiguity and align centralized vision.

  • Collaborated with engineering to align design vision with technical feasibility and development velocity

  • Adopted new design system to ensure global brand and accessibility consistency.

  • Developed hierarchical grouping logic for seamless, cross-product access.

The Results
Establishing the foundation for long term success,

  • Consolidated 75% of account systems into one single ecosystem via a centralized hub where admins can manage identity to meet diverse product needs.

  • Lowered Total Cost of Ownership for admins by replacing manual labor with self-service.

  • Established a "plug-and-play" framework that slashes future engineering costs.

Takeaways
Lessons, growth, and change

Lesson

  • Creating solid team collaboration and process is just as important as crafting great experiences.

Growth

  • Design iteration early and often is a valuable tool not only to get feedback on the UI, but to surface technical constraints and bridge domain gaps before they became bottlenecks.

Change

  • Prioritize transparent communication through weekly syncs to establish feedback channels, driving consistency and raising collective UX maturity.