Canada Revenue Agency
IT Self-Service Portal
Led UX vision, design system, and delivery for a full-scale platform modernisation — consolidating four legacy systems into a single accessible portal for 75,000 government employees.
The Final Result
Frictionless experience that would drive user adoption and measurable financial growth.
The Challenge
Four separate legacy platforms — built in the early 2000s — left 75,000 employees with no unified entry point. Routine tasks like password resets required IT calls. Previous modernisation attempts had stalled on 114 unmaintained forms.
- Fragmented across 4 systems
- Navigation relied on institutional memory
- High helpdesk dependency for basic tasks
- Non-compliant with WCAG accessibility standards
My Role
June 2023 – May 2024
Senior Product Designer (contract) leading UX vision, design system, and visual design across an 12-month Agile delivery. I owned every design decision from IA strategy through to developer handoff.
- UX strategy & vision
- Information architecture
- Wireframing & prototyping
- Design system (Figma)
- Accessibility compliance
- Usability testing
Final Design
A unified portal with a homepage built around the three highest-frequency tasks, a modernised form library, a power search, and a complete design system to support ongoing CRA and CBSA product development.
Typography & Color Scheme
The visual language of the portal was redefined to balance federal authority with modern accessibility. I implemented a clean, highly legible typography to ensure zero-latency loading and maximum readability across diverse government hardware.
What Shipped
The portal launched in December 2024, serving thousands of employees daily. Every defined project milestone was delivered within the 12-month contract.
- Four fragmented legacy systems consolidated into one coherent portal
- Employees can independently complete the top three IT tasks without calling support
- 114 forms modernised with consistent language, structure, and interaction patterns
- Portal meets federal WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility obligations — previously non-compliant
- Scalable design system established to serve ongoing CRA and CBSA digital products
- CRA internal UX team shifted toward Agile, iterative delivery practices
Want to see how it was built?
The process page covers the full research methodology, six design phases, design system architecture, and what I’d do differently — with diagrams for each stage.
