Fragmented sources and lost context
Current and historical records lived across disconnected systems and formats, and institutional knowledge was lost as experienced staff retired.
DOD · AI-ENABLED FINANCIAL OPERATIONS · 2025
Financial intelligence for audit-ready decisions.
Designing a secure, human-centered AI platform that turns fragmented financial information into clearer oversight, defensible decisions, and a more prepared organization.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Compliance work needs more than data. It needs confidence.
A U.S. defense agency's financial organization set out to modernize audit preparation and financial oversight with an AI-enabled platform. The effort arrived as defense financial leaders were publicly exploring AI to reach clean audits, and as recent defense legislation drew attention to AI in financial statement audits.
The experience needed to make complex data useful across analysts, program managers, and audit stakeholders, without compromising security, governance, or human judgment. The resulting direction established a scalable UX framework for transparent AI-assisted analysis, collaborative review, and secure sharing.
01 · THE CHALLENGE
Financial knowledge was present. It was not connected.
Manual reconciliation
Teams spent critical time locating, validating, and reconciling information, and new staff supporting audits had little to orient them.
Opaque complexity
Data needed to be legible to both technical and non-technical decision-makers.
High-stakes trust
Every AI-supported insight needed to remain traceable, interpretable, and defensible.
02 · THE PRODUCT VISION
A financial intelligence platform built on enterprise data.
The platform brought configuration, analysis, evidence, and collaboration into one governed environment, helping people move from finding information to acting on it. Answers drew on an on-premises, fine-tuned, domain-specific language model and retrieval across more than a decade of source material, so sensitive data stayed inside the organization’s boundary.
FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE / SECURE WORKSPACE
SIMULATED MODEL
What can I help you with today?
ANALYSIS
3 areas require review
TRACEABILITY
Evidence linked
COLLABORATION
Ready to share
Identify unreconciled resource changes with supporting evidence.
Generate ↗
Change patterns detected across prior reporting periods.
Every finding retains a route to its source data.
Save, annotate, and route outputs securely.
03 · DESIGNING FOR TRUST AND SCALE
Creating an AI tool for discovery of financial data to shape reporting
The platform helps users move across connected financial data, examine relationships, and turn analysis into visual reporting views tailored to audit and oversight questions.
Explore across the node cluster
Use prompts to navigate connected financial data to follow relationships, examine patterns, and identify areas that may warrant further review.
Build custom reports
Filter and compare data across available dimensions such as reporting period, organization, or account to create reports suited to the scope of a review.
Manage findings
Save useful dashboard views and reports, then share them securely with authorized reviewers for discussion and follow-up.
Generate highly customizable and focused dashboards
Use prompts and analysis results to create dashboard views that bring relevant measures, trends, and areas for review into focus.
04 · FROM INSIGHT TO IMPACT
Strategy and delivery moved together.
Find the real work
Led stakeholder and user interviews to reveal pain points across audit preparation, financial oversight, and onboarding new staff.
Make complexity usable
Created user flows, conceptual wireframes, and visualization frameworks for AI-assisted decisions.
Build shared confidence
Used sprint reviews to translate technical progress into narratives of clarity, impact, and trust.
05 · MY ROLE
Leading the experience where AI capability meets adoption.
As UX Lead, I guided the experience from discovery through prototyping, aligning user needs, audit workflows, and emerging AI capabilities. I also co-created the strategic vision for the app—helping the team define what the product should make possible and how it could support financial oversight in a secure, governed environment.
Discovery & alignment
Experience strategy
AI transparency
Agile delivery
Research synthesis
Executive communication
Jira operating model
Cross-functional facilitation
I worked across leadership, data science, policy, and delivery to turn that direction into a coherent experience. I led research and synthesis, shaped the UX strategy and interaction model, and developed concepts for transparent analysis, connected data exploration, tailored reporting, and secure collaboration. Through prototypes and sprint reviews, I helped teams evaluate the direction, communicate the experience, and carry it toward delivery.
KEY NUMBERS · 2025
A six-month pilot the client wanted to extend.
What this established
The pilot arrived as defense financial leaders were publicly prioritizing AI for audit. The client's financial organization responded positively, and the pilot led to 11 new requirements for AI-focused tools that build on its foundation.
It established the conditions for responsible scale: a scalable UX framework that will guide future AI-assisted compliance and financial tools, clearer cross-functional delivery through transparent, user-centered practices, and a strategic position for UX as a driver of trust and adoption in the defense AI ecosystem.
Mission Readiness and Audit Compliance
Pilot
11 new REQs
Delivered as a pilot for a federal defense agency's financial organization. Platform visuals are illustrative. Client details withheld.
TAKEAWAY
Intelligent systems earn trust when people can understand, evaluate, and act.
In high-stakes financial environments, good AI experience design makes capability usable and accountability visible.