Enhancing the employee dashboard for efficiency and ease
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ROLE
Principal UX Designer
User Researcher
Product Ideation
Prototype
Testimonials
"[Charles] took the Dash Help Center to the next level, making it faster, more intuitive, and way easier to navigate … while ensuring a smooth ServiceNow implementation. He listened to our team, tackled our biggest frustrations, and delivered a design that actually helps us get work done."
- Senior Technology Analyst @ Southwest Airlines
TEAM
1 Principal Designer
1 Senior Designer
1 Architect
1 Engagement Manager
1 Account Executive
TOOLS
Figma
Sharepoint
Google Forms
TIMELINE
8 Weeks
Aug 2024 - Nov 2024
The Brief
“How can Southwest Airlines transform its Dash Help Center to create a seamless and modern employee experience?”
The Solution + My Role at a Glance
At Southwest Airlines, I set out to revamp the Dash Help Center, making it easier for employees to find what they need without the frustration of slow navigation and cluttered content. The goal? A modern, intuitive system that actually works for the people using it every day.
I worked closely with employees, IT staff, and stakeholders to simplify workflows, improve search, and refresh the interface so it felt seamless and easy to use. Along the way, I ran usability tests, hosted workshops, and gathered real feedback to make sure we were building something that truly helped.
To future-proof the system, I introduced standardized components and interactive templates, making updates quick and scalable. In the end, we delivered a Help Center that’s faster, smarter, and actually supports employees the way it should.
Research
“Show me where the bodies are buried”
I started by meeting with the Account Executives and Project Manager to take a closer look at their current tools and workflows. My goal was to understand the state of the systems they were using daily — examining both front-end and back-end functionalities, along with the business processes driving them. The images that follow provide a snapshot of the original system, giving you a sense of where the product began before the redesign.
To get a clearer picture of what wasn’t working, we went straight to the source: Southwest employees.
What I Did:
Stakeholder Workshops – We met with product managers, IT teams, and project leadership to understand business goals and IT challenges.
User Interviews – We sat down with pilots, flight attendants, managers, and ground crew to learn how they used (or avoided) the portal.
Card Sorting Sessions – We tested how employees naturally organized information so we could build an intuitive structure.
Focus Group Testing – Facilitated focus groups to gather user feedback on key features, helping identify pain points and refine design solutions based on real-user insights.
I conducted user interviews, stakeholder workshops, card sorting, and focus group testing with the Ground Ops, Customer Service & Support (CS&S), and Headquarters teams to gather valuable insights. From these sessions, we selected 10 participants for in-depth interviews, gaining a deeper understanding of their preferences, content needs, and usage patterns. This informed our approach and helped us address their challenges more effectively.
What I Learned:
Employees needed faster, easier ways to get IT support — without digging through endless pages.
The search function was broken — people couldn’t find the right articles or services.
The service request system was frustrating — employees had no idea where their ticket stood after submitting it.
Everyone had different needs — but the portal treated them all the same.
These insights highlighted key areas for improvement, guiding us to refine the portal’s navigation, search functionality, and ticketing experience to better support employees.
User Personas
Building on the insights from user interviews and testing, I was able to synthesize user personas that captured the motivations, goals, and challenges of our target audience. These personas helped us better understand user needs and behaviors, allowing us to tailor our design decisions more effectively. By incorporating these findings, we were able to pinpoint key areas for improvement, align our team’s efforts, and refine our overall user experience strategy to better meet the needs of our users.
Ideation
How might we make the Dash Help Center more efficient and
user-friendly for all teams?
We conducted (roughly) seven usability tests and concluded once we identified consistent patterns in user interactions.
Based on the insights gathered, we proposed improvements to navigation, search functionality, and workflow efficiency. Using the Standardized Usability Metric (SUM), which measures task completion, time on task, user satisfaction, and error rate — we validated that the redesigned portal met usability standards and better supported employees in their daily tasks.
Usability Testing
After defining the “How Might We” statement, we moved further into ideation, where I led the design and prototyping phase. The goal was to turn concepts and criticisms into tangible solutions and validate them with users.
Usability testing focused on:
Validating prototype ideas with real users
Refining prototypes based on user feedback
We reconnected with the previous Southwest teams (our new testers), from prior interviews, and the survey respondent pool.
Lo-fi Concepts + Components
This is where things started to take shape. I kicked things off with quick concepts and low-fidelity mockups to smooth out navigation and improve workflows. From there, I built out the foundational components and a scalable design system using ServiceNow’s framework. After several iterations and direct user feedback, we landed on a layout that felt intuitive, cut down on friction, and made daily tasks easier to manage.
Design
Final Designs Gallery
After extensive research and collaboration with key teams, the final design streamlined workflows, enhanced the user experience, and created a solid foundation for future improvements. This empowered the Southwest Airlines team to confidently manage ongoing updates, ensuring the portal continues to meet evolving needs and provides long-term value to users across Ground Ops, CS&S, and Headquarters.
Reflection
This project was a deep dive into the challenges of designing for a fast-moving, operations-driven environment. While I’ve worked on complex enterprise systems before, seeing firsthand how Southwest’s teams navigate their daily workflows gave me a new appreciation for the role of UX in simplifying and streamlining mission-critical tasks.
Throughout the process, I learned that designing for efficiency isn't just about reducing clicks or making things look modern—it’s about understanding how people actually work. By engaging directly with employees across different roles, I was able to identify pain points that weren’t always obvious at first glance. This reinforced the importance of research, real-world testing, and continuously refining solutions based on direct user feedback.
Some of my biggest takeaways from this project:
Design should adapt to the user, not the other way around — It was critical to create a system that fit into Southwest’s existing workflows rather than forcing users to adjust to a rigid new structure.
Iteration is key — The first solution is rarely the best one, and through multiple testing cycles, I saw how small tweaks made a big impact on usability.
Success is measured by impact — Seeing the final product not only improve usability but also reduce frustration and save employees time proved that great UX isn’t just about aesthetics … it’s about making people’s jobs easier.
Ultimately, this project showed me that the best solutions come from truly listening to users, staying adaptable, and always keeping real-world needs at the core of every design decision.