AppFirst was a big-data startup with a highly technical SaaS product. My work spanned brand and product, from web design, campaigns, email, case studies, infographics, and illustration to UX research, product design systems, onboarding, and custom client-facing applications.

For the brand, I developed a visual system that could move between technical communication and more expressive marketing. Diagrams and information graphics helped explain the product, while illustration gave campaigns and content some personality.

As the team grew, I partnered with leads across strategy/sales, design, and development to create a more structured workflow with clearer stages, handoffs, and approvals.

On the product side, the challenge was organizing a large amount of information across logs, infrastructure, alerts, reports, graphs, transaction tracing, and system data. I developed a product design system for recurring interface patterns and worked through navigation, tables, filters, data visualization, environment setup, and other core flows.

Heat mapping, surveys, and direct user observation helped identify where people were getting stuck or overlooking key information. Those findings informed hierarchy, interaction, and interface decisions throughout the product.

That work also extended into onboarding. New users were being introduced to a powerful, complex product, so I redesigned the experience to introduce features in smaller, more manageable steps and make the next actions clearer.

I also designed custom client-facing aggregation applications for different data sets and use cases, using the established product patterns as a foundation rather than treating each one as a separate system.