Utah County UX System

Award-winning Government Transformation

I led the creation and expansion of Utah County's design system, using it as a tool to restructure government workflow. By implementing a federated governance model, I removed the friction between departments and developers. The result was a 150% increase in service usage, 3.3 million in IT budget secured, and two NACo awards.

My Role

UX Lead

Full-stack Developer

Timeline

May 2023 - Mar 2024

Team

Leon Huang (Full-stack Developer), Kara Nosack (UI/UX Designer), Leena Kumar (Web Data), Michael Teuscher (Full-stack Developer), Daniel Bateman (Full-stack Developer), Brandon Davis (Project Manager)

UtahCounty.gov

Trust Deficit

Utah County Government (UCG) digital infrastructure supports 700,000 citizens, but it was failing. Accessibility issues and broken navigation across our 30+ public web applications eroded public trust, while costly post-launch fixes made the 25 internal departments skeptical of IT's capabilities.

My objective was to secure a modernization budget and implement a sustainable UX solution, I will pilot a high-impact UX project to gain trust, build the foundational tools for a UX operation, and scale the tools to all 25 departments.

01 Pilot

To rebuild trust and secure funding for a county-wide initiative, I had to first deliver a tangible win by proof of concept. I chose our most visible public asset—the main county website—as the pilot project to demonstrate the immediate impact of a user-centered design approach.

Task-Based Intuitive Navigation

In-House AI-Powered Search

Elasticsearch

AWS Lambda

Foundational Style Guide

Key results that unlocked the next phase

User: 4.2/5 user satisfaction through embedded Qualtrics surveys
Stakeholder: Turned skepticism into genuine excitement in meetings
Internal Team: Expanded my solo project into a collaborative UX initiative

02 Build The System

Diagnosing Execution Failures

The new UX standard of the pilot struggled to scale, so I interviewed dev teams to diagnose the systemic problem. My research revealed 3 interconnected problems spanning all parts of our operational system: our tools, our process, and our people. This was how I solved them:

01Style Guide was too abstractA dev-friendly Design System02Rigid workflow caused bloated budgetsA hybrid-agile workflow03Centralized governance create bottle-necks and dissentsA federated UX committee

Dev-Friendly Design System

We identified the most common layout patterns and created modular components and templates for them. We then created a straightforward copy/paste component library paired with a Tailwind theme package. This approach gave developers maximum ease of customization, enabled easy batch updates across all services, and provided built-in WCAG 2.2 compliance.

Hybrid Workflow

We replaced the rigid waterfall process with an agile workflow that integrated design thinking principles and asynchronous UX testing, eliminating late-stage rebuilds.

Research & Define

Schedule users for current & future research.

Personas, flow & sitemap creation.

Project ManagerDepartmentUX DesignerPublic User

A Federated UX Committee

To eliminate quality control bottleneck and ensure the design system's continual evolution, I led a UX committee consisted of representatives from each development team. This way the design system can benefit from a deeper understanding of product needs while each design representative can ensure the smooth application of the design system within their team.

03 Scaling

The pilot departments, now our strongest advocates, presented their success stories during county agenda meetings. Their testimonials, backed by our data on improved efficiency and user satisfaction, created unanimous support and were the deciding factor in securing the full $3.3 million from the county's IT upgrade fund.

Impact

National Recognition

Our redesign effort was recognized by the National Association of Counties (NACo) in 2024 for its best-in-class improvements to digital service delivery.

Financial Viability

$3.3 M
Target budget secured for web modernization: 80%
Departments completed the new system adoption: $0
Net cost, as savings from the design system fully funded its development

User Impact

100%
WCAG 2.2 compliance on all new projects: 150%
Increased public service utilization: 4.2/5
User rating

Operational Efficiency

40%
Reduced developer time spend on rework

Sustainable Foundation

Most importantly, we successfully laid the foundation for a sustainable UX future within the Utah County Government.

Solo designer/devA dedicated UX teamNo UX processA proven systemSkepticismInternal advocates

Read the Full Case Study

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