A branded, accessible Drupal theme on a compressed timeline
Project Overview: A brand new Drupal website and theme utilizing US Web Design System (USWDS) components designed to modernize and replace an existing site.
My Role: Senior UX Designer responsible for design discovery, style tiles, client design coaching, stakeholder presentations, developer/engineer collaboration, Drupal theming and frontend coding, and project roadmapping.
Project Wins
- Led UX design under a shortened timeline and reduced budget
- Streamlined delivery by designing directly in Drupal with USWDS components
- Ensured accessibility, responsiveness, and brand alignment in real time with developers
- Created example page templates and documentation to guide the client’s team after hand-off
- Introduced a design kickoff and shared vocabulary to build trust and reduce confusion
*All work done while at Palantir.net
This project underwent an early budget cut that dramatically shortened the timeline, requiring the team to adapt our approach. While the initial project scope was much larger, the financial change required us to modify our timeline and deliverables. I partnered closely with developers to accelerate the pace, designing directly in Drupal with USWDS components to ensure accessibility, responsiveness, and brand alignment. While I’d typically work in Figma and a frontend workshop like Storybook or Pattern Lab, this shift had me diving directly into the Drupal theme and admin space to streamline delivery.
My early process included, in part, conducting a comparative analysis of existing workforce development sites and reviewing sites that the client liked.
I designed a set of style tiles to gain a solid design direction that aligned the teams and would be the basis for styling the new theme.
During some early meetings, it became clear that the design kickoff needed to be geared towards guiding the client through expected deliverables and creating a shared vocabulary.
The impact of this was increased client trust and a solid foundation for alignment throughout the project.
I also created example page templates and documentation to guide the client after hand-off, equipping their team to confidently extend the work without dedicated design support. The result was a branded, usable starter theme delivered under tight constraints—a solution that balanced client value, user needs, and technical feasibility.
