Balancing Act had been a constantly evolving product for several years before I came aboard as design lead. Feature after feature had been developed, resulting in a more robust product, and a lot of design debt. The core experience felt more bloated, complex, and inconsistent than it should have, and users were suffering because of it. Typography wasn't consistent, buttons didn't always behave in the same manner, modals and popovers were inconsistently used, hover states were hit or miss.

To remedy this problem, I utilized the princples of atomic design to make the visual experience more consistent throughout the application. Focusing my attention on making the experience more consistent paid off to the tune of roughly 30% more engagement in the budget simulation, meaning more people were able to have a stronger voice in their govenment's budgeting conversation.

Part of the growth of the platform meant that we needed an easier-to-use admin experience. As more governments were utilizing the platform, a more turnkey way of setting up and managing simulations was required to ensure that Balancing Act employees weren't being bombarded with requests for help with setting up new budget simulations.

I designed a custom CMS platform that allowed the partner organization to quickly spin up new instances of the application white-labeled to match the branding of their clients. Using this tool, admins are able to quickly and efficiently set up budget simulations, with plenty of customization options readily available.

The result is hundreds of governments around the world and their constituents being deeply engaged in local and national budget conversations.