Problem

The organization relied on large, highly complex Excel sheets to manage capacity planning. The process was:

• Extremely data-heavy, with many variables, dependencies, and edge cases

• Difficult to scale, validate, and reason about

• Prone to errors with high operational impact

The product had to be built entirely from scratch, with no existing designs or internal tools to reference. There were also no usable public references for similar data-intensive capacity management platforms. The timeline was strict, and the focus was not on visual polish, but on building a system that worked reliably and handled dense data with clarity.

Solution

I designed a UX-first capacity management platform focused on clarity, structure, and progressive disclosure.

Key UX decisions included:

• Accordion-based layouts to allow users to progressively expand, collapse, and drill down into complex datasets

• Breadcrumbs to maintain context across deep navigation levels

• Hovers, tooltips, and popups to explain complex data without cluttering the interface

• Side and bottom drawers to surface secondary and contextual information while keeping users in flow

• A date switcher along with Today, Throughput, and Forecast views to support different planning and analysis modes

• Thoughtful micro-interactions and feedback states to reduce errors and build confidence when working with critical data

• The product went through continuous iteration over approximately eight months, evolving alongside real usage, changing requirements, and newly discovered edge cases.

Outcome

The final product replaced spreadsheet-based workflows with a dedicated internal platform. It improved clarity, efficiency, and confidence in capacity planning decisions, and delivered a scalable, data-intensive UX within tight timelines and constraints.