NOVA
Building a reliable source of truth for NOVA’s 52,000+ users worldwide.
Kessel Run
5 Stakeholders
1 Product Manager
1 Developer
1 Designer
My Role: Lead Product Designer
0→1 Product Design · Stakeholder Alignment · Information Architecture · Systems Thinking · User Research · Usability Testing · Responsive Design · Prototyping · Design–Development Collaboration
Design across desktop, tablet, and mobile
The Brief
Who: 52,000+ Air Force personnel across flying and non-flying units use PEX globally each week.
What: PEX is the system of record for operations management, supporting the planning, execution, and reporting of missions across the Air Force. NOVA is a suite of applications that work together to support these operations. Throughout this case study, I refer to these applications as products.
NOVA users needed a reliable way to know when products were unavailable. When an application like PEX went down, it could disrupt operational planning and mission reporting, while inaccurate information about outages spread quickly.
Solution: I worked with stakeholders to create a centralized source of truth for NOVA users—one place to understand what was happening across the suite, even when individual products were unavailable. The experience brought together product status, access, maintenance notices, and other important updates.
Research
My first task was to better understand what our five stakeholders needed. I scheduled and led an ideation exercise to identify common themes and map out priorities. I then asked stakeholders to dot-vote on the themes they felt were most important, based on what they had heard from users.
I then asked stakeholders to prioritize the themes using a 2x2 matrix, weighing business value against user value.
Once we identified the priorities, I held a follow-up meeting with our stakeholders to better understand what each one entailed. We captured their context and perspectives directly in the map, helping us align on what each priority meant and why it mattered.
After running these exercises with stakeholders, a few things became clear. NOVA needed to:
Make available apps and websites easy to discover — users didn't always know what tools were available to them.
Remain accessible when NOVA apps went down — users needed a reliable destination that wouldn't disappear when the primary applications were unavailable.
Provide a source of truth for maintenance — scheduled and unscheduled maintenance notices needed a centralized, efficient way to reach users.
I synthesized the stakeholder feedback into four key insights. Users needed:
1
Advanced Notice
Advanced notice when NOVA products would be under maintenance, so they could adjust their schedule accordingly
2
Real Time Status
A clear view of the current health of NOVA products.
3
Access to Products
An easy way to find and access the products and services available within NOVA.
4
A reliable source of information
One place for NOVA announcements, training, product updates, help, and other important information.
“False information spreads quicker than we can currently get information out. We just need one central place they can touch and go to. One focal point.” - Stakeholder
“We're dying for something like this... getting the right information out is the most important part.” - Stakeholder
Design & Testing
Once the team was aligned on the goals, I started exploring how the information could come together in a simple, intuitive experience.
With the initial structure in place, I explored a couple of low-fidelity directions and brought them to stakeholders for a quick feedback session. The goal was to pressure-test the hierarchy before moving into higher fidelity.
Less is more. Stakeholders felt the initial side panels containing Notes, Links, Help, and other content were too cluttered.
Group products as a suite. They wanted apps and other useful website links to feel more clearly connected as a single suite of products.
Design for all devices. They wanted a responsive experience that worked across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
I revised the information architecture based on the first round of feedback, then explored how the content could be organized into a clearer, simpler experience.
With the revised structure in place, I explored different ways to bring the content together and create a simple top-to-bottom experience.
After various design explorations, I set up another stakeholder feedback session, this time with a mid-fidelity prototype.
“Appealing to read, appealing to look at.” - Stakeholder
“Looks really good. Feels familiar.”
- Stakeholder
The flow felt simple. Stakeholders liked that the page was easy to navigate and followed a straightforward top-to-bottom flow.
The purpose was clear. They liked the hero image section, which I had included to help users immediately understand the purpose of the new page.
The team agreed we were ready to build a dummy site and put it in front of users. I worked closely with our developer to bring the design to life.
Product Foundations
The sidebar needed to make the page easy to navigate without becoming another source of clutter. I kept the initial navigation simple while designing it to expand as new features were added.
Spotlighting the Sidebar
One of the more important pieces was figuring out how status should be communicated across NOVA. I worked with stakeholders to define both the overall system status of the NOVA suite and the individual status of each product.
System Status
The overall availability of the NOVA suite.
Product Status
The availability of an individual NOVA product.
I worked with stakeholders to define the different status types, including when each should appear and what it should communicate. This gave users a current view of NOVA's availability while making it possible to understand the status of an individual product.
Spotlighting System Status dropdown
There was no pre-established design system for NOVA's suite of apps, so I created a set of simple, responsive components that could be reused as the product grew. I worked closely with our developer to make sure the components were practical to build, and the testable prototype came together in just a few days.
“The simplicity of the design is really helpful.” - Developer I paired with
Once we had a working prototype, we put it in front of five NOVA users over a one week span. I wrote the test scripts, tasks, and survey questions, then moderated and recorded each session. Our stakeholders joined to take notes and observe the sessions.
I color-coded notes to separate takeaways, quotes, and other observations, making the results easier to scan and synthesize.
User testing assets and results. Five users rated the prototype 4.5/5 overall.
“We've never had anything like it [NOVA Splash]. This is going to greatly enhance our communications and presentation to the field...”
- User
“Looks really good. Feels familiar.”
- User
“It's user friendly, usable, and well designed."
- User
“I feel like it's a pretty good website as it is and it's gonna be pretty useful in the future for us.”
- User
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and users were excited to see NOVA move forward. The testing also surfaced a few areas we could improve:
Clarify terminology. We used “maintenance” to mean software maintenance, but some users interpreted it as aircraft maintenance. We updated NOVA’s copy to make the distinction clearer.
Make the product relationship clearer. Not all users thought of the apps as a collective group of products.
Surface individual product status. Some users expected the health status of each product to appear directly on its product tile rather than behind the status dropdown in the header.
"I realize that you're pushing this to 52,000 users. They have Operational mindsets, not software mindsets, so it could be confusing if you're talking about maintenance." - User
After reviewing the testing feedback, I explored several iterations based on what users told us—particularly around how individual product health and availability should be communicated.
Post-testing design explorations of individual product health and availability.
The experience was designed to work across desktop, tablet, and mobile, giving users a consistent way to access NOVA regardless of device.
Demo of Final Version across desktop, tablet, and mobile
Outcome: I designed and helped build the MVP, tested it with NOVA users, and iterated on the experience based on their feedback. The final MVP was well received, and when I transitioned off the team, I was told they were excited to roll it out to NOVA’s 52,000+ users worldwide. The project was ultimately shelved after I left, before that broader rollout could take place.
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