CFIUS

Challenge

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) manages sensitive and complex data related to national security and foreign investments. The internal system used by analysts and case officers to review filings was fragmented, unintuitive, and relied heavily on outdated interfaces and manual workflows. Users had to navigate between multiple applications and spreadsheets to gather context, verify data, and document decisions—leading to inefficiencies, duplicated work, and potential risks to timely decision-making.

Approach

As the UI/UX Designer on a cross-functional team, my objective was to streamline and modernize the case management experience for CFIUS users, while ensuring the interface adhered to strict federal security and accessibility requirements.

I began with discovery sessions involving analysts, legal advisors, and technical stakeholders to understand how they interacted with the system on a daily basis. Through interviews and observational research, I identified key pain points, including:

• A lack of centralized access to critical case data

• Inconsistent navigation patterns across modules

• Poor readability and accessibility, especially for dense legal documents

From these insights, I developed detailed user personas and mapped user journeys to surface the most critical touchpoints in their workflow. I then created wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes to explore design directions focused on clarity, efficiency, and security.

Usability testing was conducted with internal users under a controlled environment. Based on feedback, I refined the designs—improving information hierarchy, introducing contextual filters, and creating reusable UI components that could scale across the application.

Results

The redesigned interface unified disparate workflows into a single secure platform, providing case officers with:

• Streamlined access to case files and historical data

• A cleaner, more intuitive layout for reviewing and annotating legal documents

• Role-based dashboards that prioritized high-risk cases and upcoming deadlines

Post-deployment feedback highlighted a 40% improvement in task completion time for routine reviews and a significant reduction in user error when updating case information. The design system I established also laid the groundwork for future enhancements, making the platform more adaptable to policy changes and interagency collaboration.