USCIS Global
How transforming an outdated enterprise software led to a more usable and efficient business tool.
I led the redesign of a critical document generation workflow for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), working closely with an agile team of developers, product managers, and business stakeholders.​
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My team replaced an outdated drafting tool and created a new, more efficient document generation experience that is integrated into the existing web interface that our users are most comfortable with. This new process speeds up critical document generation and review steps, reduces errors, and sets a new standard for mission-critical government workflows.​
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Date: June 2025 - Present
The situation
USCIS relies on custom-built software to generate a vast range of legal documents essential to asylum and refugee cases. However, years of patchwork updates led to inconsistent interfaces, manual workarounds, and pain points for both staff and applicants. Tasked with modernizing one of the core asylum case workflows, I worked within a cross-functional Agile team alongside developers, product owners, and business stakeholders.
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I functioned as the lead designer, collaborating closely with my team and the stakeholders at USCIS up to the level of the branch chief. My responsibilities included:
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Detailed mapping of the current state processes and pain points through hours of user research
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Leading workshops to gather regulatory and operational requirements
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Creating and iterating on high-fidelity prototypes covering multiple user roles and complex document scenarios
The current state
Prior to our redesign, document generation at USCIS was largely manual, highly fragmented, with error-prone copy/paste practices and poorly documented exception handling. Staff navigated outdated UI screens, redundant data entry points, and inconsistent templates, leading to:
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Extended processing times for key application flows
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High training overhead for new staff
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Regulatory compliance risks due to template drift
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Through qualitative research—user interviews, workflow observations, and process audits—we documented the detailed user journeys and surfaced recurring blockers.​
Process map of the current state of document generation on asylum cases
Problem
Analysis revealed that the existing document generation process failed both the asylum applicants and the government users in several ways:
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Labor-intensive workarounds: Staff must manually update templates and stitch together data from disparate systems
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Inconsistent output: Version control errors and exceptions led to legal documentation mistakes
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Missed automation opportunities: Repetitive tasks that should be automated consumed significant staff capacity
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Poor feedback loops: Users lacked in-context validation or error-handling guidance
What I did
We began by mapping the end-to-end NTA issuance journey to expose redundant steps, error-prone handoffs, and the riskiest assumptions for adoption. I partnered with platform engineers and ELIS product teams to document the current state, then framed a lean, automation-first vision: remove manual tasks, pre-fill wherever possible, and instrument outcomes from day one.
An overview of steps involved in the process and the improvements that our new solution offers
45 min
Time savings (99.6% reduction) to generate documents for users
25.8k hrs
Time savings in last 6 months across 34.6k documents generated
200
Average number of officers per week using our generation tool
Results
The revamped document-generation workflow provided immediate and measurable efficiency improvements for USCIS staff, enhancing consistency and confidence in a crucial process. By replacing disjointed, manual drafting tools with an integrated experience within the officers' existing interface, the team minimized repetitive data entry, eliminated frequent copy-and-paste errors, and significantly streamlined the drafting and review process, making it easier to learn. This led to a more seamless end-to-end experience, reducing operational friction and establishing a reliable foundation for producing legally sensitive documents at scale.
The impact was significant across user groups. One of our core user groups experienced a 45-minute reduction in document creation time per document—a 99.6% decrease—while another group saved about 38 minutes per document, equating to an 84% reduction. In the six months following the release, the enhanced workflow saved an estimated 25.8k staff hours across 34.6k generated documents, averaging about 4.3k hours saved each month.
Adoption rates continued to grow, with the system supporting 23k documents and saving 17.2k hours—around 5.7k hours per month—during the most recent three-month period, indicating increased usage and sustained performance. Currently, approximately 200 officers use the tool weekly, indicating that the new workflow not only improved metrics but also earned trust as part of their daily operations.