Audit Report
Redesigning the Audit Report:
30% Faster Error Resolution for
Compliance Power Users
UX Strategy
Enterprise SaaS
Design Systems
Overview
Context
Sentinel is a compliance-driven SaaS platform used by Customs brokers to automate and manage customs clearance jobs. The platform enables the end-to-end handling of complex documentation — including Invoices, product codes and declarations — ensuring every detail complies with trade and tax regulations.
One of the core modules in Sentinel is the Audit Report, which plays a crucial role in error detection and compliance verification.
The Audit Report identifies all the Errors, warnings and data formatting issues that arise during Job creation. These include omissions in mandatory fields, invalid formatting and issues like duplicate invoice numbers within a financial year.
It enables users to view, prioritize and resolve issues across multiple layers — from Job-level fields to Invoice-level discrepancies and Item-level data accuracy.
The Audit Report is a critical feature triggered during the job creation process. It lists:
In its original form (Version 1), the Audit Report was functional but flawed. Users Primarily, customs brokers had to sift through dense tables, jump between multiple tabs, and track issues manually across forms. This not only slowed workflows but also introduced risk in regulatory compliance.
The goal of this project was to redesign the Audit Report experience to be more structured, intuitive and user-friendly, allowing customs brokers to resolve issues faster, with more clarity and confidence.
My Role
As the Product Designer, I led the end-to-end UX process for this feature.
Conducted user research with internal QA and client-side compliance users
Built and iterated wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes in Figma
Extended our token-based design system
Worked in agile sprints with PMs, engineers, and QA to ensure seamless implementation
As the Product Designer, I led the end-to-end UX process for this feature. I collaborated with:
1 Product Manager
3 Engineers
QA & Customer Success Leads
Responsibilities
Research and stakeholder interviews
Wireframes and hi-fi prototyping (Figma)
Creating components to include in Design system
Usability testing and dev handoff
What is the Problem in Version 1 of the Audit Report?
When I examined the original version of the Audit Report, we saw a feature that technically worked, but failed to respect the way power users actually think and operate. Customs brokers aren’t casual users, they rely on efficiency, spatial memory, and rapid mental shortcuts. Version 1 interrupted all of that.
We’re not designing for beginners. These are super users, people who live in this product for hours, who think in shortcuts and who does n't like inefficiency
Users & Stakeholders
Primary Users
Stakeholders
Product Manager, Engineering Lead, Customer Success & Domain Expert.
Customs brokers often operate under strict deadlines, navigating a flood of jobs simultaneously. Any friction in resolving errors can lead to shipment delays, penalties or missed clearances.
Existing Audit Report User Flow
By situating the Audit Report within the larger Sentinel workflow, I understood its role as the bottleneck between job creation and Flatfile submission. Optimizing this step unlocks speed and confidence for power users, directly impacting system-wide efficiency.
Pain points in Existing Audit Report
Cognitive Overload
Workflow Disruption
Inefficient Error Resolution
Turning Problems into Opportunities - How Might We's
To move from identifying problems to exploring solutions, I reframed the pain points into ‘How Might We’ questions. This opened up space for design exploration and aligned stakeholders on opportunities
Defining the Goals
I set clear goals that addressed both user frustrations and business needs for the redesign of the Audit Report. The focus was on reducing cognitive load, enabling faster error resolution, and creating an experience tailored for power users.
Reduce Cognitive Load
Present audit issues in a clear, scannable format that minimizes information overload.
Enable Direct Resolution
Allow users to click on errors/warnings and jump directly to the exact field that needs fixing.
Support Power Users
Optimize the experience for expert users who manage complex, high-volume workflows daily.
Maintain Workflow Continuity
Keep the audit report accessible side-by-side with the job form, reducing context switching.
How I Planned to Solve This ?
I have started with contextual inquiry and usability audits to understand the real-world behavior around the Audit Report. Despite being central to job validation, it was underutilized or bypassed entirely by many users.
Research Activities
User Persona - Understanding the User
From contextual inquiries and interviews, I identified a clear picture of the primary users of the Audit Report. These are experienced brokers, power users who manage high volumes of data daily. Creating a user persona helped me capture their goals, frustrations, and needs, ensuring the redesign aligned with their actual workflows.
Insights that Shaped the Redesign
Through interviews, contextual inquiries, and persona building, I uncovered key insights about how power users interact with the Audit Report. These findings revealed their real frustrations and guided our design priorities.
Design Process
I followed a structured, iterative process to redesign the experience without overwhelming users, especially those handling 50+ jobs per day.
1. Journey Mapping
Mapping the Existing Experience
To better understand user pain points, I recreated Version 1 of the Audit Report flow as wireframes. This helped visualize how errors, warnings, and formatting checks appeared in context and revealed friction in navigation and error resolution.
2. Organizing by Hierarchy
Organized Information Architecture based on hierarchical importance
Since I was designing for power users, I prioritized speed and clarity over beginner-friendly labels. Working with stakeholders and domain experts, I validated how compliance brokers naturally think about their tasks. This helped me redefine the hierarchy.
3. Prototyping
Exploring Ideas Through Lo-Fi Wireframes
I began with low-fidelity wireframes to quickly explore the end-to-end flow of job creation and error handling. These sketches helped me validate the placement of the Audit Report, test how side-by-side error correction might work, and gather early feedback from stakeholders before investing in high-fidelity design.
Test, Learn, and Iterate
Low-fidelity prototypes gave us a fast way to validate assumptions with real users. By observing their behaviors, we uncovered what truly mattered and refined the Audit Report to better match power users’ workflows
Key Insights
From Sketch to Screen
With key insights validated, I moved into high-fidelity designs. Since this project is under NDA, I’ve replaced text labels with dummy content, but the flow and structure remain true to the final solution.
Together, these improvements transformed the Audit Report from a hidden checklist buried in tabs into an active, side-by-side companion. Instead of scanning long tables and memorizing error details, power users can now see issues in context, click directly to fix them, and keep the form and report visible at the same time. This shift not only speeds up error resolution but also builds user trust, reducing cognitive load and ensuring data accuracy with far less effort.
Error Resolution: Then vs Now
Fixing errors in Version 1 was a multi-step process that demanded memorization and manual searching. In Version 2, the redesigned flow reduced it to a single click, giving power users speed and confidence.
Design System Integration
I built reusable card components in Figma to show Errors, Warnings, and Formatting in a clear, consistent way. Adding these to the design system made the UI easier to scale and helped the dev team work faster, while giving power users a smoother experience
NDA Note
Due to confidentiality with Unifo, full UI visuals and sensitive client data are omitted. However, the design process, decisions and outcomes represent my actual contributions. I’m happy to walk through anonymized flows and design logic in a live session.
Version 2 – What Changed?
Outcomes & Results
The redesign led to tangible improvements in user workflow, satisfaction and system efficiency.
Reflection & Takeaways
Designing the Audit Report was a deep dive into systems thinking, compliance UX, and designing for speed and clarity under pressure. I learned to trust user behaviour over assumptions.
Here are my biggest takeaways:
Designing for power users means embracing speed, not simplification
This project made me deeply aware that power users don’t want extra UI, they want fewer clicks, faster access, and smarter defaults.
Hierarchy matters more than volume
Redesigning from dense tables to structured cards showed me that surfacing the right information in the right order is far more valuable than showing everything at once.
Design systems are enablers, not constraints
Reusable tokens and components helped us scale faster, reduced handoff friction and ensured consistency without compromising creativity.
Good UX gives helpful feedback, not just instructions
The Audit Report didn’t just show errors, it helped users understand what went wrong and how to fix it, right in the flow of work. That made the experience feel supportive, not frustrating.
