Shell’s Upstream Digital organization had 10 mission-critical applications built independently on the Pega platform. Each application had its own visual language, navigation patterns, components, and interaction models, creating a fragmented experience for field engineers, geologists, and reservoir managers.
The fragmented ecosystem resulted in low UI consistency, accessibility gaps, duplicated components, inconsistent UX patterns, and increasing platform maintenance costs. There were also multiple Pega versions in use, creating technical and operational risks.
I was brought in to lead a 22-month enterprise UX transformation focused on creating a unified experience across the application portfolio through UX governance, DesignOps, a centralized design system, and platform standardization.
The scope covered the complete UX transformation of 10 mission-critical upstream applications across Shell.
Principal UX Designer & DesignOps Lead
03 (Lead UX Designer, Product Owner, Technical Architect) 12+ business-unit leaders across the organization.
Field Engineers Geologists Reservoir Managers Well Planning & Engineering teams Production & Operations teams Asset Performance teams
Figma, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Teams,
This project reinforced that enterprise UX leadership is about more than creating better interfaces it is about creating the conditions for better design to scale. By aligning people, governance, DesignOps, technology, and design systems, I helped transform a fragmented portfolio into a more consistent, accessible, and sustainable experience across 10 applications. The lasting impact was not just the 64-component design system or improved UX metrics, but establishing a shared language and operating model that enabled designers and developers to collaborate more effectively and continue evolving the experience beyond the program
“The real transformation wasn’t the system—it was creating a culture that could sustain it.”