CONFIDENCE UX
Risky drilling ops,
now a beacon of
confidence
Safely drill for oil. Orchestrates globally dispersed teams making hundreds of high-stakes environmental and billion dollar economic decisions. I made risk legible at the moment of the decision.
Modern Design Drilling Ops
Enterprise UX
Oil & Gas
system Design
Bolt on AI
0 to 1
20
decisions
and design moves
→
40+
risks & hesitation signals
reduced or eliminated
→
Fragmented tools ⟶ single source of truth
DOS report cycle ⟶ months to hours
Projected $22 M / yr cost reduction
at stake
risk of environmental devistation
risk of injury and loss off life
strong industry competition
Background Story
Why it mattered
A bottom-hole assembly is a string of tools run miles into the earth to strike oil reservoirs. Meer minutes of non-production time, hesitant decision making and human error were million dollar threats to the ops pipeline, however project ops was being performed by manually stitching together spreadsheets, PDFs and tribal memory.
I was brought in to collaborate with a project team to design a unified system and workflow that to reduce the workflow time to hours.
North star
Reduce workflow from month to hours
Problem • What I heard
“
Today I estimate we need 50% additional headcount just because of inefficiency in software and process.
— Halliburton Drilling Engineer
My take
These were seasoned engineers, fear of the tool was less a hesitation point than the weight of being responsible for errors and disaster and the labor of crude collaboration.
5
Separate Apps
No data sync. Redundant user tasks. Heavy context switch.
Market Pressure
Competitors were automating Halliburton needed a leap forward to remain competitive.
Limited Scale
Legacy platform siloed from other applications, regions or internal orgs outside of drilling.
Low
Productivity
Work lost due to system crashes. Manual reports creation cost 80% production time/wk.
Discovery Approach
Ambiguity stalled the project...
Harsh industry domain knowledge
I required deep learning of industry positioning and contextual details.
Solution bias
Stakeholder resistance, users held onto expectations around legacy tool workarounds
Evolving direction
An ambiguous north star, make a modern experience; AI changed workflows.
I designed clarity that got the team unstuck
Role
Interview/Testing Facilitator
Discovery lead
UX storyteller
UX roadmap Owner
measurement Strategy
Deliverable stack
1.UX Deliverables
2.UI Deliverables
3.Handoff Artifacts
4.System Priorities
5.Design Feature
6.Product Feature
Discovery Outcomes
50+
Touchpoints
4
User Roles
12
Key Screens
100+
Required tasks
Legacy System Profile
Complex non-linear app suite
7 apps; each step involves switched between apps
Serves 20 Countries/ 5 global regions
13 collaborators
8 Regulated checkpoints
→
Future System Profile
Unified collaborative platform
Need modern feel
Need reduce time to complete
Need forward-thinking interactions
Design Strategy
Three leadership decisions that built
Confidence
Role
UI Designer
Design Director
UX & Interaction Strategy
AI-Generated erodes design authority
the Push
A design lead proposed polished AI-generated screens days before sprint close. Accepting the work as is would have been faster and avoided debate.
My Decision
I challenged the design in ways the team hadn't accounted for: wholistic system impacts, tradeoffs and how frequency changes user expectations. I led the team toward a workflow grounded in system logic.
Demonstrated
✓ Design Judgment
✓ Systems Thinking
✓ Cross-functional Influence
✓ AI Generated Design Review
Balancing competing goals with taste
the Push
Development lead optimized performance. Product pushed for a modern experience. The initial UX direction favored a single interaction pattern.
My Decision
I introduced context. I challenged the assumption that consistency always improves usability and I weighed interaction patterns to task frequency and consequence.
Demonstrated
✓ Exception by design
✓ Trade-off resolution
✓ Risk-calibrated interaction design
Define ambiguous requests
the Push
Product asked for a "confident yet modern" feel with no measurable direction. The tension was design toward a mood, not a spec.
My Decision
i turned a vague aesthetic ask into a structural system. i cut friction by reduce data-entry effort across the product. I made progress personal and rewarding, not just a status bar.
Demonstrated
✓ Motivation-driven interaction design
✓ Translate ambiguity to system
✓ Design to unify system
✓ Apply Confidence UX
Approach
Injecting system design transformed engineering decisions
Role
UI Designer
Design Director
UX & Interaction Strategy
Page Banner
Semantic:
Page Banner
Tab Bar
Semantic:
Tab
DETAIL
System Status
Page Banner Function: User can identify or change project from single screen
Well Section Tab Bar: Manage varying project complexity
2➞1
App consolidation
↑usage
Stay on page
DETAIL
Version Control
DETAIL
User Decision
DETAIL
Reduce Error
Challenging system design - BHA Tool
These 4 moves reduced complexity
Role
UI Designer
Design Director
UX & Interaction Strategy
Handoff & deployment
Drilling Tool
BHA Tool
Add Tool
components
Logistics
Customize
Preview Tool
Analyze
Measurements
Load Project
1
2
3
4
1. Increase certainty
Human-centered approach to ease learning
User-friendly micro-copy, interactive motion on triggers and intuitive decision points enabled new users to easily navigate the screen.
Eliminated hesitation
175
input fields
Cognitive Load
Summary
before
Result
Single modern cloud platform + global shared intelligence + live collaboration
Scalable confident decisions.
Alignment time from Weeks → Hours
Report published in 3 clicks
Expert Approach
Design Thinking
Platform
Single System
40+
risks & hesitation
signals reduced or eliminated
Sigals
Decision quality - established standard for understanding AI results
Eliminated spreadsheet workaround - reduced context switch
Risk Visibility pattern
high
Lost circulation
82% Confidence
Found in 7/7 wells • [Rationale]
Made risk legible with 3 layer pattern
restraint
AI Copiolt
Autosave
Review
refresh
AI
EDit
Ready
Completed
user • Date • Time
Sigals
Conserve costs from AI token usage
Design consulted on tradeoff decisions - more clicks vs frictionless workflow
Reduced error - user clarity on versions, AI decisions reversible, fewer rework
Sigals
Turned unmeasured request into a principled north star
Tasteful and adaptive decision making when team had got stuck, errored or was uncertain
Owned design system - repeatable patterns, wholistic system
Navigated Ambiguity in key moments
Discovery
Design
Design
Design
Deploy
Deploy
Systems thinking
1
5 apps →
1 screen
2
Muliti-user
Collaboration
3
Role-based/
Personalization
4
Flow: Weeks → Hours
Sigals
Standard output and consistent knowledge share in under
Clearer screens for non-linear workflow 17 -> 5 steps
Globally multiple users use same screen live simultaneous; cloud file managment