Scenario comparison rethought as a decision workflow

Scalable Enterprise Design System

From dashboard viewing to decision-ready scenario comparison.

Modern Harmony reframed a planning product into a tighter narrative system: clearer tradeoffs, faster executive scanning, and a prototype family that made each iteration easy to compare.

6

Versioned prototypes

3

Core design disciplines

1

Decision-first workflow

Project Focus

Reduce interpretation time during scenario reviews.
Preserve analytical depth without presenting a dense first screen.
Create a reusable product language that supports iteration and handoff.

What Changed

The interface became an editorial decision surface instead of a collection of reporting panels.

01 / Overview

A premium planning case study built around clarity, system thinking, and confident decision-making.

This project reframed a complex enterprise planning flow into a minimal, editorial interface that explains tradeoffs before asking people to act on them.

Project Overview

Modern Harmony was created to make enterprise scenario comparison feel less like dashboard decoding and more like an intentional product conversation.

Product Summary

A scalable design system and comparison framework for planning teams reviewing multiple futures under pressure.

Why It Was Created

Existing tools surfaced data but did not help teams align around outcomes, constraints, and confidence. The interface needed to tell a sharper story.

02 / My Contribution

Research, experience strategy, and product design working as one system.

The role extended from research framing to interaction architecture to the final narrative language of the product surface.

01

User Research

Planned stakeholder interviews, structured synthesis, and translated raw signals into decision-ready insight clusters.

02

User Experience

Mapped the planning workflow, reduced friction across scenario review, and designed for fast executive comprehension.

03

Product Design

Established a scalable narrative system spanning typography, interaction patterns, scenario states, and prototype handoff.

03 / The Team

A compact team with clear roles and short feedback loops.

1 × Product Designer
1 × Project Manager
2 × Developers

04 / Scenario Comparison

The standout interaction is the full scenario comparison version history inside the same accordions.

Users can compare every iteration, explore design evolution, and interact with live prototypes without leaving the context of the case study.

Pain Points

  • 01Baseline structure still required interpretation rather than guided comparison.
  • 02Narrative framing was limited, so stakeholders had to infer the decision story.
  • 03Dense module groupings made first-pass executive scanning slower.

Improved Experience

  • 01Established the first reusable scenario comparison scaffold.
  • 02Created a reference point for measuring clarity improvements across versions.
  • 03Made the core comparison concept concrete enough to iterate quickly.

Live Prototype Example

Explore the version history as a single evolving product story.

Compare every iteration, inspect the tradeoffs introduced at each step, and move directly into the live prototype without losing the narrative thread of the case study.

Interactive Prototype Preview

Full-width scenario workspace with scroll support for dense screens.

05 / Challenge

Complex planning products often show data before they show meaning.

The challenge was to design an interface that helps leaders compare futures quickly without flattening nuance or increasing cognitive load.

The previous experience forced users to interpret tables, reconstruct assumptions, and align decisions across disconnected artifacts. The product needed a sharper narrative, clearer hierarchy, and a scalable way to move from signal to approval.

06 / Solution

The solution used system thinking: one visual language, one decision flow, and one expandable depth model.

Systemized surfaces

A repeatable card and section system made comparison states easier to scale and easier to hand off.

Narrative hierarchy

Oversized headings, quiet support copy, and staged detail gave the interface an editorial rhythm.

Progressive disclosure

Accordions and expandable modules kept dense information available without overwhelming first-pass review.

07 / Project Brief

The brief centered on clarity, trust, and executive readiness.

Goal

Create a scenario comparison experience that helps planning teams evaluate options and explain decisions with less effort.

Audience

Planning leads, finance partners, executive stakeholders, and cross-functional delivery teams.

Success

Reduce interpretation time, improve confidence, and make the path from review to sign-off more visible.

Constraint

Preserve analytical depth without forcing every user into a power-user interface.

08 / Empathy

Empathy meant designing for people under decision pressure, not just for data consumption.

“I do not need more dashboards. I need confidence that this scenario is the right story to tell.”

The product was shaped around the emotional reality of planning work: ambiguity, accountability, and limited time. Empathy showed up in how fast the interface explained itself, how carefully it revealed tradeoffs, and how well it supported alignment in the room.

09 / User Interviews

Research was detailed enough to drive product strategy, not just validate interface taste.

Interviews focused on planning leaders, analysts, and delivery partners involved in scenario review and escalation.

Interview Findings

01Decision-makers needed an executive summary before diving into scenario-level evidence.
02Analysts wanted to preserve diagnostic depth without forcing every user through it.
03Teams repeatedly described version comparison as mentally expensive and error-prone.
04Stakeholders valued confidence language and recommendation framing more than more charts.

Affinity Mapping

Decision confidence
Narrative framing
Traceable assumptions
Executive scannability
Cross-functional alignment
Handoff readiness

10 / User Persona

The primary persona needed speed, confidence, and a product that did more explanation work.

Persona

Avery Singh

Planning Director

Avery is accountable for presenting scenario decisions to leadership and needs an interface that can compress complexity into a trustworthy narrative without removing analytical proof.

Primary User

Finance and planning leads

Goal

Compare scenarios and approve a direction quickly

Needs

Clear tradeoffs, confidence cues, and less interpretation work

Frustration

High-effort comparison across disconnected views and exports

11 / Define

Define focused the project on one strategic question: how can scenario comparison become easier to understand than to misread?

The defining move was to treat the interface as a decision narrative system, not just a collection of charts. That reframed hierarchy, interaction, information architecture, and the eventual handoff model.

12 / Defining The Problem

Planning teams could generate scenarios, but they could not compare, explain, and approve them with the same level of clarity.

Scenario states were visible, but rationale was weak.
Analytical depth existed, but hierarchy did not.
Decision workflows depended on external explanation and manual alignment.

13 / Ideate

Ideation focused on how to make comparison feel lighter without making the product feel shallow.

Decision-first layout

We explored oversized headings, executive framing, and pre-read narratives before any dense dashboard composition.

Scenario as product object

Each scenario was treated as a modular card with assumptions, outcomes, and handoff status rather than just a chart state.

Progressive depth

The final concept reserved analytical density for expandable regions so leaders could stay in the main storyline.

14 / Copilot + AI Workflow

Research, design systems, interviews, and references were fed into an AI-assisted workflow built for speed and rigor.

The workflow connected design thinking, agent orchestration, prototyping, and developer handoff inside VS Code.

Design System Integration

Modern Harmony tokens and references informed typography, spacing, and reusable UI patterns.

Research Material Integration

Interview findings, synthesis notes, and opportunity clusters were organized into promptable source material.

AI Agent Collaboration

Specialized agents handled orchestration, design evaluation, platform constraints, and implementation support.

VS Code + Copilot workflow

The build happened through iterative search, targeted edits, validation passes, and component-based implementation.

Claude-assisted design thinking

Alternative framing and design reasoning were explored through AI-supported synthesis and critique loops.

Prompt-driven prototyping

Structured prompts accelerated section generation, scenario storytelling, and interaction exploration.

Developer handoff process

The final step translated design intent into modular code, reusable patterns, and production-ready structure.

Research

Interview transcripts, affinity notes, and design references were structured for prompt-ready retrieval.

Copilot

VS Code + Copilot coordinated code scaffolding, section architecture, and implementation passes.

AI Agents

Specialized agents handled orchestration, Qlik feasibility, design guidance, and development iteration.

UX Flows

Prompt-driven flows translated research into scenario states, interaction rules, and journey framing.

UI Design

Modern Harmony tokens and layout systems informed the visual language across premium editorial sections.

Prototype

Interactive prototypes were generated and compared as versioned checkpoints instead of one-off screens.

Development

Implementation details, handoff notes, and modular React components completed the loop into production-ready code.

Workflow Diagram

Research
Copilot
AI Agents
UX Flows
UI Design
Prototype
Development