Simplifying an internal system

Summary

As a member of the innovation team, I designed a simplification of an internal dashboard focused on removing unnecessary actions from daily work. The changes cut the time to add a document by ~15 seconds, reduced the number of steps by −3 clicks, and saved admins up to 45 minutes across their daily workload.

The starting point

The dashboard was used to publish documents, each requiring several fields and data points. Years of adding features without validation had produced a flow with redundant steps and high cognitive load, which slowed admins down and increased errors.

Hypotheses

• H1 — If we reduce the number of actions and clicks in the flow, we lower cognitive load and admins work faster and with fewer errors (speed-up of +25 %, error reduction of at least −50 %). — partially confirmed
• Assumption — If we hide unused features in the dashboard, we lower the effort and speed up onboarding of new admins by helping them grasp the workflow faster (+25 %).

The solution

Because admins went through the same flows in different ways every day, I proposed simplifying the most common paths and removing duplicate steps.

Part of the solution was a dashboard personalization system that let each team member work with the data relevant to their role.

The result

Simplifying the flow showed up as saved time — on average ~15 seconds per task and −3 clicks. Across the daily workload, that lets an admin save up to 45 minutes.

In “soft metrics”, the dashboard personalization got positive feedback especially from long-standing team members, who valued being able to set columns and data to their own needs.

Insight

The biggest brake on efficiency in admin tools isn’t the number of features — it’s being forced to use them all in one universal flow. The data showed that removing unnecessary steps and adapting the interface to individual needs has a bigger impact than a blanket simplification for everyone.