User experience auditing and guidance to update a critical application used by a growing community.

• UX Audits

• User Interviews

• Live Observation Research

• Wireframes

• Support Design System Creation

• Survey Research

• Community Support

TAK originally came to us to perform UX and design audits on their civilian Android application ATAK, with a plan to determine opportunities for improvement and iterate through UX design and prototyping.

After an initial discovery process involving stakeholder and user interviews, on-site observation, and hands-on application auditing, we moved into wireframe and prototype iterations. Opportunities to improve usability and viewability of assets in the application were discovered, and a full UX/UI refresh was implemented for the ATAK application. While visual design resources worked on a new design system, I conducted a feature-by-feature audit and iterated based on my findings and feedback provided by the TAK community.

Improvements focused heavily on navigation and interactive elements across the application. Icons were too small in previous iterations, making it difficult to tap specific items. This was especially true in active situations. Layout of the navigation and map controls required consideration of various use cases including not just landscape and portrait modes but how devices were physically held or manipulated by users, such as mounted onto their body or a vehicle. Interactive elements lacked consistent sizing, styling, and flow. We established a set of guidelines for interactive elements and applied workflows that were as consistent as possible. The design system became a guide for developers creating features for the application to follow to create consistency and improve usability. Initially, this was specific to the Android application, but after interest grew for more consistency across platforms, I created a quick-guide based on the design system that could be used by all developers and designers.

Near the end of the five years I worked with TAK, I was the lead UX representative for the development community, augmenting the TAK team as the only resource from Mindgrub. I continued to support the TAK team with wireframe iterations and design system support until our contract ended.