The Space Force required a solution to streamline their process of managing laser firing requests, which involves coordinating with multiple countries and secure networks. This process, critical to ensuring operations don’t disrupt other nations’ satellites, previously took up to a week to resolve. The goal was to drastically reduce this time while also teaching the Space Force team how to design and deliver modern software efficiently.
Joshua Graves, our founder, led the design effort on this project at a previous agency. He worked alongside Space Force counterparts in design, product management, and engineering, introducing modern software methodologies such as sprints and scrum. The team focused on understanding the bottlenecks in their process, particularly around manual, error-prone data parsing and communication between Operators.
After a deep dive into the workflow, Joshua identified several ways to simplify data entry and streamline asynchronous communication. Various prototypes were tested to find solutions that met the project’s unique secrecy and security requirements. Ultimately, he developed a web portal for inputting laser firing requests, created a notification system to prioritize requests, and introduced a dashboard to manage open requests efficiently.
Joshua also established a comprehensive design system in Figma, integrated with React and Material UI, to support ten teams. He provided training on maintaining and growing the design system, ensuring the team could operate autonomously after handoff.
At Lost Horse, we bring the same level of expertise in design and operational efficiency to every project, ensuring our clients benefit from scalable, secure, and innovative solutions.