From Rapid Redesign to Architectural Evolution: Scaling Insider into a Unified Platform Experience

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Confidentiality Notice

To respect Lightcast鈥檚 legal and confidentiality requirements, specific data, client references, and internal system details have been removed or abstracted. The examples shown accurately represent the design strategy, architectural decisions, and workflow improvements while omitting sensitive information.

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Project Details

Role

Product Designer

Timeline

2 Months for V1, Ongoing V2 Iteration

Scope

Product strategy & prioritization 路 Information architecture & workflow design 路 Cross-functional leadership 路 Interaction & system design 路 Engineering partnership 路 Iterative UX research & North-star definition


The Starting Point

Problem Framing

When I joined Lightcast, Insider was a live platform actively used by consultants to deliver client-facing insights, but its navigation, workflows, and interface patterns had evolved without a unifying system. Core delivery moments required workarounds, mental models were misaligned, and inconsistent UI patterns created friction across critical tasks, exposing deeper structural gaps in scalability and clarity.

The challenge was to modernize and stabilize a moving system in real time while consultants continued serving clients. With no opportunity for full re-architecture and a two-month redesign-and-launch window, the work required balancing delivery speed with long-term platform vision, aligning with Lightcast鈥檚 evolving design system, and operating within existing engineering capability constraints, requiring deliberate tradeoffs between ideal architectural solutions and what could realistically be delivered within the timeline.

Insider served two primary users: external client end-users who consumed labor market data & insights, and internal consultants who used the platform as their delivery system of record. For V1, I prioritized stabilizing and simplifying the external client experience to improve usability at key delivery moments, while deferring deeper internal/admin workflow refinements to a subsequent phase due to timeline, engineering, and business constraints.