Austin Tang
Back to all work
  • Internal tool
  • Front-end development
  • UI design

Paciolan configuration tool

A tool built so business teams can make routine system changes without pulling engineers off other work.

My role
Front-end developer and UI designer
Team
Me, two front-end developers who also designed, and two back-end developers
Context
UC Irvine capstone project for Paciolan
Illustration of stacked panels holding cards with on and off toggles
Illustration, not a screenshot of the tool. This was work for a company, so I can't share the screens.

Every small change pulled an engineer off their work.

Whenever the business team needed a change made to a client's setup, the software engineering team had to take many manual steps to make it. Each request pulled engineers away from other work.

  1. The request

    The business team needed a change to a client's setup.

  2. The manual steps

    Engineers made it by hand, step by step.

  3. The cost

    Every request took engineering time from other work.

What we built

We built an internal tool that automates those changes, with the business team as its users. The goal was simple: fewer manual edits to internal systems, and more engineering time for everything else.

I worked on the front end and the interface design, including the card layouts that organize the page.

Line sketch of a page of setting cards, each with an on and off toggle
A sketch of the card layout idea, redrawn for this page.

The goal

The tool was designed to cut unnecessary manual changes to client systems and free up the software engineers to take on other work.

The tool at a glance

Users
The business team
Replaces
Manual changes made by engineers
My part
Front end and interface design
Frees up
Engineering time for other work

What I learned

I built the page's card layout with a card library that made cards quick to create. About two weeks in, the engineer mentoring our team pointed out that it wasn't dynamic enough for what the tool needed, so we had to recreate each card by hand.

He showed us more efficient coding methods that cut the complexity, and I reused parts of my earlier code to catch up. With his feedback, we finished on time. The lesson: check that a shortcut fits the real requirements before building on it, and take feedback as a way to move faster.