Jaylene
Rubio
My File NYC 2025
Enabling families to digitally confirm receipt of critical notices to help agencies reduce costs.
Timeline
Q32025-Q42025
Role
Product strategy
Systems thinking
Visual design
Team
Product director
Technical PM
2 Designers
3 Engineers
The Product
My File NYC enables families in shelter to upload and share critical documents with city agencies. While the platform already supported document storage and sharing, one major gap was the inability for clients to electronically acknowledge receipt of critical notices—such as appointment slips and eligibility forms—required for compliance in the shelter process.
The Challenge
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.
Outcomes
Reduced reliance on physical deliveries by 74%
2x faster processing of shelter applications
Clear, trackable records of acknowledgment to meet standards.
My Role
As lead designer, I drove the UX strategy and design execution for this feature.
Translate DHS compliance requirements into a user-friendly acknowledgement flow.
Ensure both client and agency needs were addressed without overcomplicating the product.
Collaborate with product and engineering to define the MVP scope and prioritize functionality.
Design goal
Introduce a scalable feature without breaking established patterns.
Understanding Constraints & Policy
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.
Initial questions before designing..
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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Ideally communications stays within My File but this would introduce scope creep.
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Agency Experience - Sending a notice
Designing the Agency Experience
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.
Short-term solutions in tandem with scalable design
Adding more navigation items to surface key tools quickly.
Introducing personalized notifications
Additional pages
Notifications
Add a layer of client communication
customizable notifications
Expanding client pages to provide richer context and history.
Adding filters and sorting options to make the dashboard more flexible and efficient.
Client Experience - Receiving a notice
Designing the Client Experience
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.
Learnings
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.
