NASA JPL
Infrared Science Archive (IRSA)
Modernizing IRSA’s research platform to improve usability, streamline workflows, and scale with future NASA missions.
Role
Lead product designer (Contract)
Team
Cross-functional collaboration with scientists, engineers, data architects, product manager, and design manager
Timeline
Key outcomes
60% increase in task completion, 2x faster time-to-discovery, and launched the first scalable design system for IRSA tools.
IRSA viewer tool Before & After
Overview
As a contractor at Interactivism, I partnered with the design manager to support Caltech’s IPAC team in modernizing the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA)—a suite of powerful but aging tools used by astrophysicists to query and visualize massive space datasets.
The project began with a discovery phase, where we interviewed scientists, engineers, and internal stakeholders to understand how they interacted with the tools, where friction emerged, and what challenges they faced when navigating the complex UI.
What became clear: the platform was critical for research but difficult to learn, maintain, and scale. Tools had grown organically over time, leading to inconsistent experiences and increasing technical debt.
We scoped the first phase around foundational improvements—establishing a modern, scalable design system and rethinking the information architecture. The goal was to reduce cognitive load for scientists, support future dataset expansion, and give the Caltech team a reusable design foundation to evolve the platform over time.
multiple irsa portals
Business needs
Modernize the IRSA platform UI to align with evolving user expectations and scientific workflows.
Reduce technical debt by consolidating fragmented tools and outdated components.
Build a scalable design system to support future feature growth, cross-platform consistency, and faster development cycles.
Support future public data access initiatives, expanding beyond the core research community.
irsa viewer tool before
User problems
The tool had grown organically over decades, resulting in:
A cluttered, outdated UI that didn’t scale with modern needs
A high learning curve, especially for new users
Rising engineering overhead, with duplicated patterns and no shared design system
Hidden or buried features, limiting discoverability and efficiency
Opportunities
Leverage user research to align product structure with the mental models of both experienced scientists and next-gen researchers.
Create a design system foundation that reduces frontend complexity and accelerates future development.
Improve the user experience to increase adoption of new tools.
Position IRSA as a future-proof platform ready for public access and broader community engagement.
My role
I was responsible for leading the design strategy from discovery through deliver, including:
Product strategy development aligned with both business and user needs
User research—conducting interviews, workflow analysis, and usability testing with scientists and researchers
Information architecture redesign to simplify workflows and improve feature discoverability
Interaction design—mapping complex scientific tasks into intuitive, scalable workflows
High-fidelity UI design that modernized the interface while supporting dense, data-driven tasks
Design system foundations to drive consistency, reduce tech debt, and scale across platforms
Cross-functional collaboration with astrophysicists, data scientists, engineers, and product stakeholders to ensure scientific accuracy, technical feasibility, and user-centered outcomes
Objectives
User research
I conducted interviews, workflow mapping, and usability studies with two primary user groups:
Senior Staff Scientists: Domain experts prioritizing precision, repeatability, and low-friction tools
Postdoctoral Researchers: API-savvy users focused on speed, scripting, and cloud-based workflows
Design
I collaborated closely with stakeholders to define MVP workflows, starting with wireframes to rapidly iterate based on feedback. To guide the visual direction, I created styleboards informed by user insights and business goals, exploring three distinct concepts:
A playful, approachable aesthetic
A Slack-inspired interface focused on collaboration and ease of use
A data-dense layout modeled after TradingView, designed for power users working with complex datasets
Stakeholders aligned on the TradingView-inspired direction, as it best matched their workflow needs — maximizing screen space for high-density data, dashboards, and actionable insights.
Testing & Validation
We ran A/B tests comparing two navigation models:
Mega Menu: Exposed all features at once
Dropdown Menu: Streamlined entry points grouped by user task
Findings:
Dropdown reduced cognitive load by 40%
84% of users preferred having actions grouped under View and Analyze
Mega menu
drop down menu
Design System
Built for Scale
To support IRSA’s growing complexity and future datasets, I created the foundation for a scalable design system that modernized the UI and reduced technical debt.
Final solution
SINGLE IMAGE VIEW
GRID OF IMAGES VIEW
COVERAGE IMAGE VIEW
HIPS VIEW
Impact
%
increase in task completion
X
faster time-to-discovery
Significant reduction in technical debt, replacing legacy UI with scalable, maintainable patterns.
Reflection
Designing for IRSA was more than a UI refresh—it was a deep exercise in systems thinking, workflow optimization, and future-proofing at scale. Working with astrophysicists, data scientists, and engineers challenged me to balance scientific complexity with simplicity and usability.
This project reinforced that designing for highly technical users isn’t about oversimplifying—it’s about making complexity navigable, discoverable, and efficient. The right solution wasn’t fewer features—it was the right organization, the right patterns, and the right mental models.
Building the design system from the ground up was a pivotal achievement. It not only reduced tech debt but laid the foundation for the platform to scale with the exponential growth of datasets, future missions, and evolving research needs.