What does honoring state history, and facilitating the in person visitor experience look like for Texas State Cemetery?
Successfully designed a modern, accessible government website and specialized interactive map tool for (how many people and visitors annually)
I set the UX vision for this project and led the team with minimal day-to-day oversight from agency leadership.
- Sole UX lead — full ownership of research strategy, IA, and design direction
- Defined the overarching UX and functional vision for how a modern, responsive, and accessible interactive map would integrate with standard CMS pages.
- Owned all client-facing presentations and stakeholder sessions
A historic state government agency under the Texas State Preservation Board, dedicated to honoring prominent Texans and providing public access to state history.
The agency needed to digitize its massive, complex physical grounds into a modern, engaging tool. It wasn't just about a website refresh; it was about translating the physical legacy and historical data of the cemetery into an accessible, historical, and educational digital experience. The new website also had to take into account reserving plots, mapping new areas that the cemetery will expand into and multilayer plots.
Navigating state government hierarchies and collaborating tightly with a specialized cross-functional team (including Front-End and specialized Map Developers).
"Research, define and design [the core deliverable] for [the organization], serving [audience] across [scale or reach]."
[Describe your research approach. Who did you talk to, how many participants, how did you recruit? What made this research approach well-suited to this domain and audience?]
[Note any domain-specific adaptations — how you modified standard methods for a medical, scientific, government, or educational audience. This shows specialized expertise, not just process-following.]
[Describe your synthesis approach — how you moved from raw data to insights. Affinity mapping, atomic research, journey mapping, etc.]
Key finding that surprised stakeholders: [describe the most unexpected or impactful insight you uncovered]
[Caption: tool used, what it shows, your role in creating it]
[Describe artifact]
[Describe what you learned]
[User type defined from research]
[Describe how you structured the content system. For experience-based creation — a set of interrelated pages — explain the conceptual framework: why you organized it this way, what user mental models informed it, and what alternatives you considered and rejected.]
[Annotate: why this structure, what the key IA decision was]
[Annotate: what this tested, what you learned from it]
[Describe the 1–2 most important design decisions you made. Specifically include cases where you pushed back on a client or stakeholder direction and explain your reasoning. This shows autonomous judgment, not just execution.]
[Note cross-department complexity: how you collaborated with dev, content strategy, clinical, legal, accessibility, or other teams.]
Early concept — [what this explored]
Tested with users — [what changed]
Final — [rationale for key choices]
[Write in first-person singular. Describe what would not have happened on this project without your specific involvement, expertise, and judgment. Be direct — "I decided," "I identified," "I introduced," not "we."]
[Describe any original framework, tool, rubric, or method you created — even an informal one developed specifically for this engagement. "I developed a content audit matrix tailored to [domain]" counts as original contribution.]
[Describe how your domain expertise shaped decisions — your specific knowledge of this sector (medical, scientific, government, education) that a generalist designer would not have brought.]
[Describe what you directed junior designers to do on this project — the method, skill, or decision-making approach you taught or modeled.]
[Describe a situation where there was no playbook — you made the call, and explain your reasoning.]
- What would not have happened without me — [specific, named contribution]
- Original framework or model I developed — [name it, even informally]
- Approach I pioneered at the agency — first time [method] was applied to [this client type]
- Domain expertise applied — how my knowledge of [sector] shaped [specific decision]
- A decision I overruled or challenged — [brief description and outcome]
in usability testing
identified in testing
achieved
Before: [describe the key problem visible here]
After: [describe the specific improvement]
[Describe the business or mission impact — not just UX metrics. How many end users now benefit from this experience? What organizational goal did the redesign serve? Connect your design decisions to downstream outcomes.]
- Downstream reach — [N members / students / visitors / researchers] now served by this experience
- Business outcome — [member engagement / content usage / reduced support load]
- Accessibility — [WCAG level achieved / issues resolved / new audience reached]
— Name, Title, Organization
Direct quote or testimonial from client lead / executive director
Was this engagement renewed or expanded? Implicit validation.
Board / leadership / conference — who attended and their seniority
Presenting findings to [N] stakeholders at [Organization], [Month Year]
[1–2 sentences. Describe a specific decision you'd revisit with the benefit of hindsight. Be direct and specific — experts self-critique; junior designers don't.]
[1–2 sentences. Describe how this project influenced your methodology, approach, or thinking on subsequent projects. This builds the narrative of an evolving, expert practice across all 9 case studies.]
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