Case Study: American Quarter Horse Association
October 2022 – September 2026
Enterprise Product Design · UX Strategy · Design Systems
Designing a More Coherent Digital Experience for AQHA
Modernizing a complex member portal, navigating a fragmented digital ecosystem, and establishing the design foundations for a more connected future.
Contracted Via: TEKsystems
Role: UX/UI Designer
Platforms: Various Responsive Websites & Web Applications
Primary areas:
· Product Design, UX/UI Design
· Interaction & Workflow Design
· Information Architecture
· Transactional Workflows
· Enterprise Design Systems
· Prototyping & Front End Pre-development
· Design Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration
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<< image 1 AQHA DIGITAL EXPERIENCE (show unaligned multi-brand sites)
A complex organization, an interconnected digital ecosystem, and an opportunity to create greater cohesion.
The American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) serves a diverse international community of horse owners, breeders, competitors, industry professionals, and enthusiasts. Supporting that community requires more than a public-facing website. It involves an extensive network of digital properties, authenticated member services, registration processes, record-management tools, and specialized industry applications.
I joined AQHA as a contract UX/UI designer with a primary focus on modernizing MyAQHA, the organization’s authenticated member portal. Over nearly four years, my responsibilities extended into related digital products, enterprise design consistency, complex transactional workflows, and the development of a scalable design foundation.
What began as a focused portal-design engagement evolved into an opportunity to examine how interconnected experiences could become more intuitive, consistent, and sustainable across the organization.
ORGANIZATION
American Quarter Horse Association
ENGAGEMENT
Oct 2022 – Sep 2026
ROLE
UX/UI Designer · Enterprise Digital Products
PRIMARY PRODUCT
MyAQHA Member Portal
AREAS OF CONTRIBUTION
UX Strategy · Information Architecture · Responsive UI Design · Complex Workflow Design · Interaction Design · Prototyping · Design Systems · Cross-Functional Collaboration · Developer Handoff
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A Central Portal For Multifaceted Member Flows
MyAQHA serves as a gateway into a wide range of member activities. Some interactions are relatively simple: locating information, reviewing records or navigating to a particular service. Others involve consequential, multi-step transactions such as registering a horse, submitting breeding information or managing official registration certificates.
The experience therefore could not be designed as a collection of disconnected pages. The underlying question became:
- How do we make a growing collection of specialized services feel like parts of one understandable product?
That required thinking beyond individual interfaces and considering the relationships among navigation, terminology, authentication, task entry points and the workflows members encounter after selecting a service.
Designing Within An Established Ecosystem
MyAQHA was not a greenfield product. The work existed within an established organization with long-standing business processes, specialized terminology, existing technical systems and users accustomed to completing important transactions in particular ways. Modernization therefore required balance.
Improving usability did not always mean radically reinventing an interaction. In some situations, maintaining familiarity was important to users or stakeholders. In others, existing workflows could be simplified or reorganized without changing the underlying business process.
The design challenge was often to identify where modernization created meaningful clarity and where continuity remained valuable. This tension shaped many of the decisions throughout MyAQHA.
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Scope:
- Product & UX/UI Design
- Enterprise Brand Alignment & Design Systems
- Accessibility Compliance
- Information Architecture
- Transactional Workflows
Goals:
- Streamline the user flows
- Realign fragmented brands
- Responsive/mobile-first website redesign with detailed notations and code snippets for development teams