PATH staff still relied on physically delivered documents to meet compliance requirements. This created inefficiencies, added costs, and slowed down the shelter exit process for families—especially pregnant clients or those on time-sensitive deadlines.
For agencies: No reliable way to confirm that clients had received or read notices.
For clients: Lack of visibility into critical notices, leaving them at risk of missing deadlines and jeopardizing housing eligibility.
I began by reviewing DHS policy and PATH’s operational workflows. I partnered closely with stakeholders and product managers to translate legal requirements into clear UX interactions.
Where would a notice section live on the dashboard without effecting the UI?
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How can we communicate to the client a notice has been sent?
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With technical constraints how can we find a creative way to prove a client has seen and understood the notice?
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What are some ways we can notify agents without overwhelming their inbox?
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Agents need more visibility on which of their clients has acknowledged the notices
A centralized system, where agencies could filter and sort acknowledgements across their caseload.
However, implementing this would require major changes to how our APIs are structured, which wasn’t feasible for the current release.
Long-term solution
Short-term solution
Implement front-end logic without backend changes.
Clear notice statuses and timestamps for accurate records.
A streamlined process for staff to send notices with minimal friction.
Challenges
Ensuring the acknowledgement feature fit seamlessly into the existing My File landscape, adapting strong design ideas to align with established patterns.
Using the activity log for acknowledgements was challenging since they required immediate visibility and action.
Approach
Provided rationale when designs didn’t fit, and balanced team input with system constraints to maintain consistency.
Differentiated notifications from the activity log, giving clients a dedicated place to see alerts that needed their attention while keeping the activity log for a full history of actions.
This project reminded me how important it is to design with the existing product ecosystem in mind.
Sometimes, I thought I was improving functionality, but working in isolation showed me otherwise. This feature development reminded me that good design happens in collaboration with the systems, not outside them.