Product Design | UX Research
Role: Product Design Intern
Timeline: Summer 2023
I joined American Airlines' UX Center of Excellence as a Product Design intern, where I worked on redesigning an internal UX resource website used to support teams across the organization.
My work combined stakeholder research, information architecture, interaction design, accessibility, and usability testing to create a more useful and scalable experience.
American Airlines' UX Center of Excellence maintained an internal website containing UX resources, guidance, and information for teams across the organization.
As the site evolved, its structure made it difficult for users to efficiently locate information and understand the resources available to them.
Redesign the UX Center of Excellence website to make resources easier to find, improve the site's organization, and create a more intuitive experience for internal users.
I began by evaluating the existing website and gathering feedback from the people who used and maintained it.
Site Audit
Reviewed the existing experience to identify usability, content, and organizational issues.
Stakeholder Interviews
Conducted 11 interviews with stakeholders to understand how they used the site, what information they needed, and where they encountered difficulties.
Design Thinking
Synthesized research findings to identify recurring needs, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.
The research revealed that improving the site required more than a visual redesign. The underlying organization and navigation needed to better reflect how users actually searched for information.
Insights from the research informed a new information architecture for the site.
I reorganized content and navigation around users' needs rather than preserving the structure of the existing website. This helped establish clearer relationships between resources and created more intuitive paths for finding information.
The revised structure became the foundation for the redesigned experience.
With the new information architecture established, I translated the research into wireframes, user flows, and interface designs.
The designs were developed with consideration for responsive behavior and accessibility, while remaining consistent with American Airlines' established design system.
I iterated on the experience through usability testing and feedback, refining navigation, content organization, and interactions as the design progressed.
This project showed me how research and product design work together within a large organization.
Stakeholder interviews helped uncover problems that weren't immediately visible from reviewing the interface alone, while usability testing provided opportunities to evaluate and refine proposed solutions.
The experience strengthened my ability to move from research and synthesis → information architecture → interaction design → testing and iteration, while collaborating within an established UX organization.
It also reinforced an important lesson that has continued to influence my work: effective redesign isn't simply about improving how an interface looks. It begins with understanding how people expect information and systems to work.
