Collaborators:
Product Managers, Business Analysts, Developers, QA, Content Editors, Designers, Marketing Partners

Tools:
Enterprise CMS platform, design and prototyping tools, internal documentation and collaboration tools

Overview / Context

The organization’s internal design system CMS served as the foundation for content creation and page management across a large digital ecosystem. As part of the design system team, I regularly worked within the CMS to test components and layouts, ensuring design guidance aligned with system constraints and capabilities.

Over time, the CMS experience became increasingly difficult to use. What began as a structured system had gradually evolved into a fragmented collection of features, configurations, and workarounds added to meet short-term needs.

Experiencing these inefficiencies firsthand—and hearing similar feedback from partners—I initiated a self-directed UX evaluation and improvement proposal to highlight the usability challenges and demonstrate the business value of investing in a better CMS experience.

Goal statement:

To identify and address key usability barriers within the CMS, making it a more efficient, intuitive tool for internal teams while supporting long-term system scalability.

Problem / Opportunity

As the design system expanded, new functionality was layered onto the CMS without addressing the underlying UX debt. The result was a complex and inconsistent experience:

• Features and modules were difficult to locate or understand
• Core workflows were unintuitive and time-consuming
• Error messaging provided little guidance for resolution

These challenges increased onboarding friction, slowed daily users, and reduced overall confidence in the system.

User and business impact:

• Increased time required to create, test, and publish content
• Reliance on informal workarounds for basic tasks
• Growing frustration among casual users
• Concerns about long-term maintainability of the system

Goals & Approach

Goals:

• Identify the most critical CMS usability pain points
• Gather feedback from users across disciplines to ensure all perspectives were represented
• Build an evidence-based case for investing in CMS UX improvements
• Position CMS improvements as foundational to the design system’s scalability and long-term success

Approach:

1. Conduct a heuristic evaluation of the CMS
2. Facilitate structured user interviews
3. Synthesize findings into actionable UX themes
4. Present recommendations to leadership for prioritization

Process

Audit & Research

I began with a self-led heuristic review of the CMS, focusing on:

• Discoverability and ease of use
• Accessibility and clarity of labeling
• Task efficiency and error recovery
• Alignment between CMS structure and front-end output

This review surfaced recurring issues such as long and unstructured menus, inconsistent interaction patterns, and unclear system feedback. The following are examples of those issues:

Examples of systemic usability patterns that reduce efficiency, consistency, and accessibility.

User Interviews

To validate and expand on these findings, I conducted structured 1:1 interviews with users across multiple disciplines, including:

• Product Managers
• Business Analysts
• Developers & QA Engineers
• Content Authors (power users)
• Designers & Marketing Team Members

Participants were asked about their daily workflows, frustrations, and ideas for improvement. Example questions included:

• How would you describe your experience using the CMS?
• What slows you down most when creating or updating content?
• If you could change one thing, what would it be?

The interviews revealed consistent frustration but also strong interest in improving the system. Many users had adapted to inefficiencies over time, assuming meaningful change was unlikely.

“It’s been so long since I actually took a look at these issues directly, and this experience has been eye opening. Having worked in the CMS for so long, I have found workarounds that have helped me be more efficient, but it wasn’t always easy. I just wish it would work the way we need it to from the start, instead of us having to waste time figuring out multiple workarounds. I really think this work is important and I’m happy that someone is finally willing to listen and bring these issues to light. Hopefully we can get this work prioritized.”

– Content Team Member

Synthesis & Insights

After reviewing interview notes and audit findings, several core themes emerged:

Common Issue	Description	Impact
Menu Taxonomy	Navigation and grouping were unintuitive	Time wasted locating modules
Accessibility of Features	Commonly used tools were buried	Slower workflows
Page Templates	Preloaded with irrelevant modules	Manual cleanup required
Field Hierarchy	Didn’t mirror frontend layout	Confusion between design and build
Error Messaging	Generic messages placed at page top	Errors often missed

Together, these insights highlighted how fragmented the CMS experience had become, and how much productivity could be regained through targeted improvements.

Presentation of Key Insights

I consolidated the findings into a presentation for a cross-functional governance group, combining research insights, anonymized examples, and prioritized recommendations to build a compelling narrative for change.

The presentation generated strong discussion and acknowledgment of the CMS challenges. Stakeholders expressed surprise at the scale of systemic issues and recognized the potential value of improving the internal authoring experience.

While the work was not ultimately prioritized on the roadmap due to broader platform considerations, the research helped inform future conversations about system direction and investment.

Deliverables

• CMS UX audit summary
• User interview insights and themes
• Prioritized pain point matrix with recommendations
• Stakeholder presentation
• Conceptual workflow improvement examples

Impact & Results

Outcomes:

• Increased visibility into CMS usability challenges
• Encouraged leadership discussion around platform sustainability
• Contributed insights that informed longer-term platform decisions
• Strengthened cross-team collaboration around UX advocacy

Although the initiative did not result in immediate redesign work, it reinforced the importance of UX evaluation in system governance and decision-making.

Reflection / Learnings

What I Learned:

• UX initiatives gain traction when paired with clear business impact
• Longstanding inefficiencies can become invisible as users adapt
• Addressing UX debt early helps prevent larger productivity losses

Personal Reflection:

This project strengthened my ability to advocate for UX improvements within complex, technical systems. While the research surfaced clear usability issues, it highlighted the importance of framing UX recommendations in terms of efficiency gains and operational value. Tying user pain points more explicitly to measurable outcomes would have further strengthened the case for prioritization.

Key Takeaway

Even when proposed improvements are not immediately implemented, UX research can shape how organizations evaluate internal tools. This initiative helped shift the conversation around CMS usability and laid the groundwork for more scalable, user-centered platform decisions in the future.