Labornet
Redefining an internal intranet as a task-focused digital product
Overview
Labornet was a mission-critical internal system that no longer supported how employees actually worked.
The Department of Labor’s intranet had grown into a sprawling content repository with no clear ownership model, inconsistent structure, and limited support for task completion. Although widely used, the system had become increasingly misaligned with employee expectations around findability, accessibility, and clarity, creating daily friction across the organization.
Rather than incremental cleanup, this work focused on defining a credible future product direction. The goal was to clarify what modernization should mean for an internal digital product operating at scale, before committing engineering resources.
I approached Labornet as a product strategy and de-risking effort, using research, information architecture, and high-fidelity prototyping to make structural problems visible and decisions testable.
My Role
I served as the UX Strategy Lead and Product Design Lead for the Labornet modernization pilot.
My responsibilities included:
Defining the modernization vision grounded in employee needs and organizational constraints
Leading research synthesis to identify the highest-impact friction points
Designing and prototyping future-state experiences to support alignment and decision-making
Acting as the primary UX liaison across OCIO, content owners, accessibility specialists, and delivery teams
Ensuring all concepts aligned with accessibility, governance, and long-term sustainability
I was responsible for making the strategy tangible. The goal was not production code, but decision-ready prototypes and frameworks leadership could trust and use to guide phased modernization.
CONTEXT
Labornet was central to daily operations, but shaped by legacy structures and tooling.
At the time of this work, Labornet served as the primary hub for internal communication, tools, and employee resources. However, fragmented navigation, inconsistent content patterns, and limited mobile support made even basic tasks difficult to complete.
Employees frequently bypassed the homepage entirely, relying on search or peer sharing to locate critical information. New employees were especially impacted, struggling to orient themselves within a system that lacked clear task pathways.
Modernization efforts had to respect existing systems, procurement realities, and uninterrupted service requirements, requiring a strategy that clarified direction without destabilizing operations.
Strategy
The strategy prioritized clarity and alignment before velocity.
Rather than starting with features or visual redesign, I focused on understanding how employees sought information, completed tasks, and where the intranet failed to support those behaviors.
Key strategic moves included:
Reframing navigation and search around user intent, not organizational structure
Establishing a task-oriented information architecture grounded in analytics and research
Designing metadata-driven content models to support relevance, accessibility, and future expansion
Using high-fidelity prototypes to test assumptions, surface trade-offs, and accelerate stakeholder alignment
The prototypes functioned as decision tools, not deliverables.
They allowed teams to evaluate feasibility, risk, and value before committing to build.
Strategy succeeded when stakeholders could see, discuss, and critique concrete options rather than abstract plans.
modernization Snapshot
From unmanaged content repository to task-oriented internal product
A key service landing page (OHR), as it was, and its modernized prototype.This snapshot highlights how legacy intranet patterns created friction for employees, and how a product-led, governance-aware approach clarified direction before engineering investment.
What these artifacts represent
A clear contrast between content sprawl and task clarity
How legacy structures obscured high-use employee tools
Why accessibility, mobile support, and search failed at scale
The shift from “everything on the homepage” to intent-driven prioritization
These were used to align stakeholders, clarify scope, inform the front and back build, and ground decisions in shared evidence.
Key decisions reinforced
Treating the intranet as a product with defined audiences, not a content dump
Prioritizing navigation, task clarity, and information architecture over surface-level redesign
Designing patterns that support governance through structure, not policy alone
Establishing foundations for future automation and AI-assisted workflows
The value of this work was not visual polish, but making the right decisions visible early.
OUTCOMES
Defined a modernized product direction for Labornet
Produced high-fidelity prototypes used in roadmap and prioritization discussions
Established reusable patterns for search, wayfinding, and content structure
Improved alignment across product, content, accessibility, and governance stakeholders
Although the work concluded at the prototype stage, it provided a clear, defensible foundation for future delivery by reducing uncertainty and enabling informed investment decisions.
What This Approach Demonstrates
Product strategy as risk reduction.
This work reflects how I approach early-stage modernization and internal systems design in complex environments.
Labornet demonstrates how research-led strategy, clear decision frameworks, and tangible prototypes can guide modernization efforts before engineering begins, setting teams up for durable success rather than short-term fixes.
The challenges addressed here (legacy systems, fragmented content, accessibility requirements, and governance constraints) are common to large organizations modernizing internal products at scale.