Launching Design Operations and UX Strategy for a Defense Technology Platform
A defense-focused DevSecOps platform faced stalled growth due to fragmented UX, complex accreditation workflows, and difficulty attracting design talent—despite a strong technical foundation. We unified their user experience, redesigned compliance workflows, and built a mission-driven design team, leading to a successful $32M Series B, 74% faster ATO prep, and major traction across federal and state agencies.
The Challenge
A venture-backed public benefit company founded by former military personnel had developed a groundbreaking DevSecOps platform aimed at accelerating the deployment of commercial software to government agencies. Despite having secured initial funding and built a sophisticated technical foundation, they faced significant usability challenges that threatened their growth trajectory.
Their platform—designed to help software companies navigate the arduous government accreditation process—was highly capable from an engineering perspective but lacked intuitive interfaces that clearly communicated its value. When we first engaged with them, they were preparing for a Series B funding round during a period of market uncertainty, and improving their user experience was critical to their valuation story.
The company had multiple product lines that operated in isolation from each other, creating a fragmented customer experience. Their design approach was inconsistent, with different teams employing varying standards and methodologies. Most critically, their accreditation workflow—the core value proposition of their platform—was difficult for customers to understand and navigate, adding friction to an already complex process they were trying to simplify.
Additionally, the company needed to expand their design team but struggled to attract top talent to work on government technology projects, which are often perceived as less innovative than commercial opportunities.
Adjective's Approach
We began by establishing a cohesive design operations foundation. Rather than immediately redesigning interfaces, we first worked to understand the distinctive needs of their users—both commercial software companies seeking government contracts and the government officials responsible for security compliance.
Through stakeholder interviews and user research, we mapped the complete experience journey for each product line. This revealed critical gaps in how users understood the accreditation process and interacted with the platform. We then created a unified UX vision that connected their various offerings into a coherent ecosystem focused on the core value proposition: accelerating secure software deployment to government networks.
Working closely with their R&D team, we designed a new experience for their "Dev" product line that created templated workflows mapping directly to compliance requirements. This included visualizing the complex Authority to Operate (ATO) process in a way that made it accessible to software developers unfamiliar with government security protocols.
We collaborated with their Chief of Data Science to transform the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) security frameworks into interactive components within the platform. This innovation allowed users to see real-time compliance status and automatically generate required documentation, dramatically reducing the manual effort typically required for government accreditation.
On the talent front, we helped establish a robust design hiring pipeline by crafting compelling role descriptions that emphasized the meaningful impact of their mission and developing an interview process that assessed both technical skills and alignment with their public benefit focus.
The Results
The impact of our work extended far beyond aesthetics. The unified design system and improved user experience directly contributed to the company's successful $32 million Series B raise, achieved during a period when venture funding had contracted significantly for defense technology companies.
Our redesigned Dev product line reduced the time required for initial platform onboarding by 63%, allowing new customers to begin the compliance process within days rather than weeks. More impressively, software companies using our templated workflows reported a 74% reduction in the time required to prepare ATO documentation.
The company's profit margins increased substantially as the streamlined experience reduced the customer support burden. Before our engagement, each new customer required approximately 120 hours of support during implementation. After our UX improvements, this dropped to under 40 hours, representing a two-thirds reduction in support costs.
The design hiring initiative successfully brought in three senior UX designers and two researchers within six months, establishing an in-house capability that could sustain the design momentum. Most notably, every designer hired cited the mission-driven nature of the work and the clarity of the user experience vision as primary factors in their decision to join.
The Transformation
Beyond the metrics, this engagement fundamentally transformed how the company approached product development. Design became integrated into their strategic decision-making rather than being an afterthought. The executive team, which had previously focused primarily on technical capabilities and compliance requirements, began to recognize user experience as a key market differentiator.
As one executive remarked, "We always knew we had powerful technology, but you helped us make it accessible. What used to be a technical discussion about security controls became a story about enabling innovation in government—and that resonated with both investors and customers."
The platform's improved usability also expanded its market reach. Initially focused on defense contracts, the company began to secure deals with civilian agencies and state governments that had previously found the platform too complex. Within a year of our engagement, they had landed several multi-million dollar federal contracts directly attributed to the enhanced user experience and documentation workflows.
This case exemplifies how thoughtful UX design can transform highly technical products in specialized markets. By bridging the gap between complex compliance requirements and intuitive user experiences, we helped the company accelerate their growth trajectory while fulfilling their mission of modernizing government technology.