EY Catalyst
Contract UI/UX design work across EY Catalyst's Operational Excellence (OpEx) portfolio: five cloud applications used to track manufacturing performance, shopfloor execution, and supply chain standards, improved hands-on through heuristic evaluation and direct user testing.
UI/UX Designer (contract), working across five applications in the OpEx portfolio, collaborating directly with stakeholders, business analysts, and product owners on each one.
The problem
Across the five applications, day-to-day friction varied by team and workflow, but the pattern held: usability issues that had gone unaddressed because there was no structured process for surfacing them, no heuristic review, and no direct testing with the people actually using each feature.
The goal
Improve each of the five applications for the people using them and for the business, through hands-on, feature-level work: heuristic evaluations to catch structural issues early, and user testing to validate that each individual feature actually worked for the people using it, not just the team that built it.
Journey map
Key decisions
Paired heuristic evaluation with hands-on user testing on every feature
Across all five applications, changes were not shipped on instinct. The team ran heuristic evaluations first to catch structural and usability issues early, then tested directly with users to see how each individual feature actually needed to improve for the people using it, rather than assuming a fix that looked right on paper would hold up in practice.
One example: replaced slow, error-prone manual edits with a Find & Replace feature, not a disruptive redesign
In one of the five applications, users had no way to make bulk updates across complex process documents: the only option was manual, one-at-a-time edits with no visibility into what would change. Rather than rebuilding the tool from scratch, the fix layered a simplified find, preview, and confirm workflow onto the existing navigation, without asking users to relearn a tool they used every day.
Screens
Where it landed
The Find & Replace feature and the broader heuristic fixes shipped to production across the OpEx portfolio.
What I learned
Working across five applications inside a large enterprise portfolio meant reaching shared clarity with stakeholders, business analysts, and product owners early on each one, that mattered as much as the interface work itself.
Heuristic evaluation caught structural issues before they reached users, but user testing on individual features is what actually validated whether a fix held up in practice.
The Find & Replace feature is one example: a lightweight, scalable fix that solved a real pain point without a disruptive redesign, designed to support future updates like more advanced search logic rather than needing revisiting.