mySSC is an enterprise digital workplace platform for Space Systems Command (SSC) and the United States Space Force, designed to unify communication, resources, and organizational knowledge across a geographically dispersed workforce.  

The platform was inspired by a growing problem across SSC: fragmented tools, buried information, disconnected communication channels, and difficulty finding relevant resources or expertise. mySSC was created to centralize trusted information into a single personalized experience that improves discoverability, workforce connection, and organizational cohesion.  

As the Lead Product Designer and Product Lead, I helped shape the product vision, UX strategy, information architecture, and long-term platform direction.

Research & Discovery

We traveled across 4 different SSC locations to talk with personnel—military, civilian, and contractor—about their experiences and perspectives. Early discovery efforts revealed a common pattern across SSC personnel.

People were spending excessive time searching for information across multiple systems while missing important updates that leadership expected them to see. User and stakeholder research through surveys and interviews identified several recurring themes:

Key Findings

• Users wanted a single trusted location for organizational information

• Existing communication channels created redundancy and noise

• Personnel struggled to identify subject matter experts across SSC

• Users desired personalized and relevant information rather than generic broadcasts

• Leadership lacked insight into engagement trends and organizational interests

• Teams often recreated information that already existed elsewhere

These findings became foundational to the product strategy and platform architecture.

Designing the Experience

One of the biggest UX challenges was balancing organizational complexity with usability. SSC consists of thousands of users across different roles, responsibilities, and locations. The experience needed to feel useful and relevant to each individual without overwhelming them.

Key UX Focus Areas:

• Personalized Experience. Reduce cognitive overload by surfacing relevant content based on user preferences and profile to increase engagement.

• Information Architecture and Discoverability. Designed structures and navigation patterns that made it easier to navigate and discover relevant content.

• Connection. Instead of relying solely on org charts and existing relationships, we designed a space for people to connect with the right people across SSC.

• Cross-Platform Integration Strategy. Rather than creating another silo, mySSC was designed as an aggregation and orchestration layer that leverages existing content and data from trusted sources.

• Empowering Voices. We created a content creation tool called Pulse to centralize content distribution across SSC and empower more Guardians to share and communicate with a wider audience.

Challenges: Balancing Complexity with Simplicity

The hardest design challenge was creating a unified experience across a highly complex organization without overwhelming users.

The platform needed to:

• Serve multiple user types

• Integrate fragmented systems

• Scale across future capabilities

• Remain intuitive and approachable

This required constant prioritization, simplification, and alignment between user needs and organizational objectives.

Building the Content Engine — Pulse

As mySSC evolved, I recognized early that a content-driven platform would only succeed if teams had an efficient way to create, manage, review, and distribute information at scale. This led me to propose and help shape the vision for Pulse — a dedicated enterprise content creation and management platform built specifically to power mySSC and future digital experiences across the organization.

Rather than embedding content management directly into mySSC, we intentionally developed Pulse as a separate but deeply integrated platform. This decision prevented mySSC from becoming bloated and overly complex, while allowing Pulse to evolve into a scalable publishing and distribution system capable of supporting multiple products, channels, and organizational workflows beyond mySSC.  

Pulse became critical infrastructure for the ecosystem:

• Content creation, review, and publishing workflows

• Multi-channel content distribution

• Collaboration and approval workflows

• Governance, roles, and permissions

• Future AI-assisted content operations

• Cross-platform publishing architecture  

The relationship between mySSC and Pulse was intentionally symbiotic — mySSC delivered the user-facing experience, while Pulse powered the operational engine behind the content ecosystem. One could not effectively scale without the other.

Designing for the Future Without Overengineering

Many planned capabilities — including AI-powered personalization and predictive recommendations — required designing systems flexible enough for future evolution while still delivering immediate value today.

We focused heavily on:

• Modular platform thinking

• Scalable UX patterns

• Ecosystem-oriented architecture

• Progressive enhancement over feature overload

Product Impact

mySSC established the foundation for a more connected and accessible digital workplace across SSC.

Outcomes

• Reduced friction in finding information and resources

• Improved organizational visibility and communication

• Increased workforce connectivity and discoverability

• Created a scalable foundation for future AI-driven experiences

• Enabled leadership insight into workforce engagement trends

Estimated Organizational Value

Intagible but Valuable

• Stronger connection across dispersed workforce → higher morale

• Better knowledge-sharing → fewer missed opportunities and alignment

Reflection

mySSC represented more than a design. It is an effort to rethink how a large, distributed organization connects people, knowledge, communication, and mission-critical information into a unified digital experience.

The project strengthened my experience in:

• Enterprise UX strategy

• Product leadership

• Organizational systems thinking

• Information architecture at scale

• Cross-functional product collaboration

• Designing for operational environments

• Long-term ecosystem planning

Most importantly, it reinforced a principle I strongly believe in as a product designer:

Good enterprise experiences are not just about usability — they are about reducing friction between people, information, and mission outcomes.