Living Memory
Designing a knowledge governance platform that treats information as a living, evolving network
project overview
Project
Content Center
Client
CC Platform
Role
Lead Product Designer & Co-founder
Services
Product Design
UX Strategy
UX Research
Design System
Platform
Web SaaS
Duration
Jun 2023 -> Present
The Challenge
Most organizations treat content as static documents when it's actually a living, interconnected network that constantly evolves. When a policy definition changes, what other pages are affected? When compliance asks "what did we say about this six months ago?" where do you look? When content spans multiple systems, who owns the truth?
Government entities and large enterprises face this daily: content scattered across CMSs, wikis, and documents; no single source of truth; version control chaos; compliance nightmares; and the constant question: "Is this information current and accurate?"
Traditional content management systems treat information as isolated documents. As co-founder, I wasn't just designing interfaces, I was shaping product vision alongside the founding team, reimagining how organizations govern their knowledge. Content Center needed to work as both a standalone system and as a governance layer integrating with existing CMS infrastructure.
The challenge became: how do you make temporal complexity intuitive? How do you visualize interconnected information without overwhelming users? How do you design one system that serves content editors needing task focus, compliance teams requiring oversight, and executives wanting clarity, all looking at the same data from different angles?
Understanding the Governance Challenge
I led iterative user research with government content teams, conducting interviews and workflow analysis to understand their daily struggles. The pain points were consistent: content editors never knew the ripple effects of their changes, compliance teams couldn't track accuracy over time, multi-stakeholder approval workflows were manual nightmares, and integration between different systems was nonexistent.
But the deeper insight came from understanding what users actually needed: not just a tool to manage content, but a system that could answer critical questions. "If I change this definition, what pages are affected?" "What did we say about this policy six months ago?" "Is this information approved and current?" These weren't feature requests, they were fundamental UX challenges about visibility, context, and control.
Designing for Temporal Complexity
The most challenging UX problem was visualizing temporal awareness—how do you show users not just what is true, but when it was true, and what changes affected what else? This required completely rethinking traditional content management interfaces.
I designed a dashboard where users can see content changes over time, not just as a version history list, but as a visual timeline showing what changed, why, who approved it, and what other content was affected. Every piece of information has temporal context—users can view the content as it existed at any point in time, see the approval trail, and understand the complete story of how information evolved.
The interaction design challenge was making this complexity feel simple. Using progressive disclosure, clear visual hierarchies, and contextual information, users could quickly scan recent changes while having the ability to dive deep when needed.
Solving Multi-Stakeholder Workflows
Government content involves complex approval chains: legal review, compliance checks, subject matter expert validation, and executive sign-off. Traditional linear workflows don't reflect this reality.
I designed flexible approval workflows that adapt to each organization's needs. Content editors can see exactly where content sits in the approval process, what's blocking progress, and who needs to take action. Compliance teams get visibility into accuracy tracking across all content. Administrators can configure rules and workflows that match their governance requirements.
The key UX insight was that everyone needed different views of the same data. Content editors needed task-focused views showing what they needed to work on. Compliance teams needed oversight dashboards showing accuracy metrics and risk areas. Executives needed high-level status without operational noise. One system, multiple perspectives.
I built a comprehensive design system supporting the platform's complex data structures and multi-user workflows. The system needed to handle everything from simple content editing to intricate relationship mapping, temporal queries, and cross-system integration monitoring.
The component architecture was designed for flexibility, the same building blocks work whether you're editing a single content piece, viewing impact analysis across hundreds of pages, or configuring integration with an external CMS. Every component was designed with state management in mind, handling loading states, error conditions, and edge cases gracefully.
The visual design balances information density with clarity. Government users need to process large amounts of data efficiently, but overwhelming them defeats the purpose. Through careful typography, strategic use of color for status and priority, and smart information architecture, the interface remains accessible even when displaying complex relationships and temporal data.
The platform delivers key capabilities that transform how organizations manage content. Temporal tracking means every change is recorded with full context: what changed, when, who approved it, why, and what else was affected. Impact visibility lets users see ripple effects before committing updates, eliminating the anxiety of unknown consequences. Flexible approval workflows adapt to organizational complexity without requiring manual coordination. And the integration layer means Content Center can work standalone or connect with existing CMS infrastructure, providing governance without requiring complete system replacement.
Content Center is currently in pilot with government clients, validating our approach to content governance. The platform represents a fundamental shift from treating content as isolated documents to managing it as an interconnected, temporal network.
For content editors, the platform eliminates the anxiety of not knowing what their changes will affect. The impact visibility means they can see ripple effects before committing updates, reducing errors and increasing confidence. For compliance teams, the temporal awareness and accuracy tracking provide the audit trail and oversight they need to meet regulatory requirements.
The design foundation we built supports the platform's evolution as we learn from pilot users and expand capabilities. The flexibility of the component system means new features can be added without redesigning core interfaces. The scalability of the information architecture means the system can handle growing content volume and complexity without degradation.
As co-founder, this project represents more than just design work—it's about creating a product that solves a real problem in a fundamentally better way. The pilot phase is validating our approach, and the design system I created ensures we can scale efficiently as the platform grows.
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