The Challenge

The New Zealand Transport Agency needed to build a system for incident and roadwork management system across the country's national traffic control centres -a system that would impact every road user in the country.

Traffic control centre operations are complex and time-pressured. We needed to understand: What are the real challenges operators face every day? What's the biggest problem we're actually trying to solve?

As the sole UX designer, I took on multiple roles - user researcher and product strategist. I worked closely with the two primary traffic control centres in Northland and the delivery team to answer these critical questions.

Research Approach

I conducted in-depth interviews with 7 traffic control centre operators across different experience levels and roles:

• 2 team leads

• 2 operators (1 senior, 1 new)

• 1 traffic light operator

• 1 manager

This mix was intentional. It helped me understand both day-to-day challenges and systemic issues across the operation.

Key Findings

The research revealed a critical insight: Operators spent enormous amounts of time manually transferring data between disconnected systems, creating severe cognitive overload.

They weren't asking for a new interface. They were drowning in manual work and context-switching. The real problem wasn't UI - it was inefficient workflows and system fragmentation.

Bridging Research, Design, and Delivery

Using lean UX methodology, I fostered collaboration across the cross-functional team throughout the product lifecycle. My approach went beyond typical UX work:

• Requirements gathering: Translating operator pain points into clear requirements

• User story development: Writing stories that captured both user needs and technical feasibility

• Collaboration with developers: Actively refining stories with the delivery team to ensure solutions were both usable and buildable

• Project monitoring : Continuously validating that decisions maintained feasibility and usability within scope

This earned me a reputation as a versatile professional adept at bridging the roles of business analyst, product manager, and designer.

How Research Shaped the Product

These insights fundamentally changed our approach:

• Priority #1: Minimise cognitive load - Every feature decision was filtered through: "Does this reduce or add to what operators need to hold in their heads?"

• Priority #2: Automate data entry - Instead of making manual processes prettier, we automated the biggest pain point: data entry across systems.

Rather than designing a generic "traffic control app," we built something specific to operator workflows. This research-informed architecture meant fewer features, but higher impact.

Impact

By grounding the product in real user needs rather than assumptions, we built the right solution, not just a well-designed one. The insights drove every architectural decision and kept the team focused on solving the actual problem operators faced.

This project impacted every road user in the country - proved to be the most rewarding undertaking of my career. It demonstrated that the most valuable contribution isn't always the most polished deliverable. It's the research and cross-functional collaboration that prevents building the wrong thing entirely.