Michelle McDonald - Principal Product Designer
Bridging horizontal product design and operational architecture to scale enterprise quality.
I split my focus between crafting complex, end-to-end user journeys and building the systemic guardrails that protect platform integrity. By embedding advanced AI workflows into my daily practice, I design the operational frameworks that empower distributed product teams to ship securely and scale quality at speed.
Core capabilities & platform impact
5+
ENTERPRISE PRODUCT
PORTFOLIOS UNIFIED
Horizontal UX strategy & ecosystems
Owning end-to-end product portfolios and transforming technical ambiguity into unified, long-term product roadmaps. Specializing in mapping interconnected horizontal workflows that connect disparate user journeys across an entire platform ecosystem.
journey mapping / design strategy / figma / workshop facilitation
100%
PLATFORM TERMINOLOGY
& ADOPTION
Operational architecture & platform standardization
Governing complex platform services, unifying fragmented product terminology, and establishing robust UX guardrails. Architecting compliant, high-integrity frameworks for heavily regulated spaces—balancing identity security and growth drivers.
system blueprints / information architecture / data informed monetization
3x
ACCELERATION IN
FEATURE DEPLOYMENT
Bespoke visual systems & high-fidelity craft
Applying an extensive background in typography, advanced vector alignment, and responsive grid layouts to establish premium, component-driven product visual languages. Elevating digital craft by translating high-level brand identity into scalable, intuitive design systems.
adobe creative suite / design systems / variable font architecture / storybook
40%
REDUCTION IN CROSS-FUNCTIONAL
SYNTHESIS TIME
AI orchestration & design operations
Utilizing frontier generative AI tools as an operational lever to optimize cross-functional synthesis, accelerate end-to-end feature delivery, and build the structured workflows that elevate team maturity and scale quality across distributed R&D orgs.
claude code / gemini / vs code / github copilot / blok
// 01 CASE STUDY. OKTA
Architecting Unified Identity Security
Evolving the platform from a system that merely reports risks into a unified ecosystem that actively resolves them—driving multi-SKU product adoption.
The strategic challenge
Fragmented security taxonomies and inconsistent communication across siloed product areas were causing severe cognitive fatigue for administrators, stalling customer security maturity and eroding platform trust.
System & architecture
Led a core cross-functional architecture team to establish a centralized Risk Framework taxonomy and build automated, systemic UX guardrails enforced across distributed platform engineering pipelines.
Experience & interface
Translated complex backend security logic into intuitive, horizontal user journeys and Intelligent Remediation Workflows that simplify multi-step security administration.
Platform governance, UX guardrails, identity security, cross-functional alignment, claude Code, Figma
// 02 CASE STUDY. OKTA
Scaling Quality Through Usability Standardization
Establishing an actionable, data-backed heuristic framework to audit, score, and systematically elevate UX quality across complex enterprise automation tools.
The strategic challenge
The Okta Workflows product was receiving broad, fragmented customer feedback regarding usability failures. With an expanding user base ranging from low-domain administrators to expert developers, the product team lacked a standardized, objective mechanism to isolate high-risk user errors and systematically prioritize engineering backlogs.
System & architecture
Deconstructed industry standards to build a customized, repeatable Okta Heuristic Framework. Designed an auditing engine that assigns quantifiable impact ratings to technical friction points, converting ambiguous feedback into actions.
Experience & interface
Applied the framework to the Workflows no-code interface to isolate critical visibility and recognition violations. Mapped optimized, horizontal remediation flows that minimized cognitive load and reduced user deployment errors.
Design operations, heuristic evaluation, quality frameworks, risk mitigation
// 03 CASE STUDY. UPWORK
Enterprise Growth by Capturing Off-Platform Transactions
Unlocking a net-new business stream for Enterprise clients by bringing off-platform team collaboration back into the secure marketplace loop.
The strategic challenge
Internal data showed long-term clients were utilizing fragmented, external tools to assemble multi-freelancer teams. This trend resulted in massive transactional leakage, exposed the platform to third-party liability risks, and bypassed core terms of service.
System & architecture
Navigated complex cross-functional dependencies across Legal, Marketing, and 5 distinct product teams to securely inject a new collaboration infrastructure into Upwork's legacy structure without disrupting baseline marketplace activity.
Experience & interface
Designed a zero-to-one interaction framework that empowered independent freelancers to co-create proposals, self-organize roles, and present a single, unified service entity to high-value Enterprise buyers.
Marketplace growth, monetization strategy, contracts & payments, cross-functional alignment, Figma