Modernizing access to US Air Force products and services

Key Takeaways

The US Air Force needed an Enterprise Portal and unified UI across three Test Integration Labs — with minimal commercial precedent to reference

• OneSpring partnered with SAIC to apply Lean UX methodology, running daily working sessions and building a design system using Material UI and the US Web Design System (USWDS)

• Delivered the Enterprise Portal, TIL wireframes, and high-fidelity mocks on schedule; introduced UX best practices and recommended design tooling for future Air Force projects

Summary

OneSpring worked closely with SAIC, our trusted partner and project lead, to support the United States Air Force—one of the main branches of the U.S. military focused on air and space missions.

Instead of just providing a basic user experience (UX) service, we helped introduce UX best practices from the beginning. This approach gave our client the tools and knowledge to understand better and apply UX methods and best practices throughout the project.

Challenge

The U.S. Air Force needed to create an Enterprise Portal for their customers and a common user interface across 3 Test Integration Labs (TIL).

Employees and customers will also need the ability to onboard the TIL lifecycle and access the other TILs. These interfaces require various features such as a dashboard, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), service catalog, catalog ordering capabilities, and the ability to track all customer purchases.

This project presented a unique set of challenges since much of the project had minimal information to reference from other similar projects in the commercial market.

Solution

Working in close collaboration with SAIC, OneSpring provided a solution beyond a tactical UX implementation by helping our customers learn and engage in UX best practices and methodologies from the start.

After carefully reviewing the tasks at hand, a lean UX approach was determined to be the best fit to meet the needs of the U.S. Air Force team.

Lean User Experience (Lean UX) is a collaborative, outcome-driven approach to product design that emphasizes continuous learning and iteration over static, idealized solutions.

Rather than focusing solely on visual execution or hypothetical user behavior, Lean UX expands the traditional UX role to include strategic input on the why, what, and how of product development. It encourages teams to align around user and business outcomes, co-create solutions, and validate assumptions early and often—ensuring features are purposeful, functional, and value-driven.

The Process

The first step was identifying and prioritizing all epics and features needed to complete the project on time. Since the enterprise portal and TIL required multiple years of development work across several teams, we needed to design a robust roadmap to keep track of milestones, MVPs, and epics. Through requirements gathering and team working sessions, we developed an interactive roadmap that went beyond a static GANTT chart presentation.

Continuous Feedback

Daily working sessions were set up to establish a continuous feedback loop for requirements gathering and wireframing. This facilitated constant collaboration and an iterative process to refine the features and user flows. For reference, various dashboards, other ordering services, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems were evaluated during this process, such as ServiceNow and Microsoft Azure.

Once the team approved the wireframes, we created high-fidelity mocks for development handoff. Since this project was built from scratch, a design system had to be created before the final mocks could be implemented.

Material UI + US Web Design System

After reviewing several design systems, we decided to proceed based on our Material UI (MUI) design system while also adhering to the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) and WCAG “AA” accessibility standards. A modern design system created a consistent look and feel for the Enterprise Portal and any project associated with the Enterprise Portal going forward.

Throughout the design, prototyping, and testing phases, we also set out to evaluate different design tools based on their collaboration capabilities, development handoff features, privacy settings, and ease of use regarding templates and component libraries. After a thorough review, we were able to provide the U.S. Air Force with enough information to make the best decision on which design tools to use for future projects.

Results

Throughout this process, OneSpring produced several deliverables:

• Our team helped facilitate collaborative working sessions to gather and validate requirements and define epic and feature work.

• An interactive roadmap was created so multiple teams could monitor progress regularly.

• A Lean UX methodology strategy was implemented to accommodate research, development, and integration for a fast-moving agile development process.

• Produced the Enterprise Portal, TIL wireframes, and high-fidelity mocks for stakeholders and developer handoffs.

• Analyzed prototyping tools and recommended which ones best suited their specific needs.