The full operation, finally in one place.
Problem & Constraints
I was initially brought on just for Piecework. After that shipped, they asked me to redesign everything. That meant starting with a fragmented legacy system and no existing design foundation, building something that could handle the full complexity of a custom souvenir operation, and doing it in a way that the team could actually use.
The scope was real: over a dozen interconnected modules, a two-sided piecework app, custom product creation with live preview, and a reporting system that sales reps and admin both depended on. Getting it wrong in one area had downstream effects everywhere.
Process & Key decisions
Orders
Orders were the core of the business, so I started here. With 64 screens, two printable reports, and a notification email, this was the most complex section by a significant margin. The list view needed to surface what mattered fast: search, filter, date range, and a clear path to start a new order.
In the main view, I organized information the way an order actually progresses, account info up front, then notes, then invoice details, then products and line items, then shipping. Every decision about hierarchy came from watching how the team worked through an order start to finish.
Reps
The list view made reps searchable and sortable by the fields that actually mattered to the team.
The main view gives a full picture of accounts, displays, order history, and payment info, with reports within a specified date range. The goal was to get the full picture of each Sales Rep.
Piecework
This was the module that started everything.
Piecework is a two-sided operation: an admin coordinating jobs and pieceworkers completing them for pay. I designed two separate web apps to handle each side, because the needs were genuinely different. The admin side needed scheduling clarity, job creation, payment tracking, and more.
The pieceworker side needed to be simple enough that someone picking up a job between other commitments could get in and out fast. Job acceptance, progress updates, payment history, and availability settings all needed to be there without making the app feel like a tool built for someone else.
Design System & Components
I built the design system alongside the product rather than trying to front-load it. As patterns emerged across orders, reps, and piecework, I formalized them. By the time the later modules were being designed, most of the heavy lifting was done. Tables, forms, modals, status indicators, printable layouts — all documented and reusable. This kept the work consistent and made it significantly easier to move quickly through later sections without revisiting solved problems.
Final Experience
What shipped was a complete internal operating system for a business that had been running on workarounds for years.
Every part of the operation, from placing an order to paying a pieceworker to running a monthly sales report, lives in one place and behaves the way users expect. It replaced Access entirely.
