TCC Software Solutions

Early UX and Front-End Work

I inherited an environment with substantial legacy UI and front-end debt.

One of the descriptions I heard on my first day was that the existing interface work amounted to putting “lipstick on the pig.” The phrase was memorable because it accurately described the larger problem: improving appearance alone was not going to resolve the underlying usability issues.

My work therefore moved beyond visual cleanup and into interaction design, user research, requirements interpretation, and implementation.

That shift became particularly important in TCC’s work with the Oregon Department of Education.

Oregon Department of Education — On-Site Usability Research

TCC sent UX personnel to the client site to conduct usability research with Oregon users—something the company had not previously done in this manner.

I helped arrange and conduct approximately 30 moderated usability sessions using competing A/B interface concepts.

Annie Rayhill and I divided the moderation so that each of us conducted sessions using both design A and design B rather than having one researcher associated exclusively with one design. Two senior Oregon staff members participated in recording results and observations.

The purpose was not simply to ask participants which mockup they preferred.

We observed how they worked through the concepts, where they encountered difficulty, which interactions they understood, and which portions of each design performed better.

The results did not produce a simplistic winner between A and B.

Instead, the research identified strengths in both approaches, and those findings informed a hybrid design that incorporated the strongest elements of each.

From Oregon Research to Ascend

The Oregon research directly informed work that became part of Ascend, TCC’s commercial off-the-shelf product offering.

Oregon became Ascend’s first client.

I subsequently worked on both the Ascend Scrum team and the Oregon Scrum team, carrying knowledge from the research into the product and implementation work that followed.

That continuity mattered. The usability sessions were not an isolated research exercise handed off and forgotten. The findings could remain connected to the people responsible for turning them into working software.

The Oregon work also strengthened collaboration between UX and business analysis.

The BA/UX working relationship developed through that effort became a useful model for subsequent TCC work: business analysis helped define requirements and domain constraints while UX investigated how those requirements translated into usable interactions.

Product and Scrum Collaboration

My responsibilities across Ascend and Oregon included UX design, requirements interpretation, front-end implementation, and collaboration with business analysts and developers.

Because I could work on both the design and implementation sides, I frequently moved between discussing user behavior and investigating how that behavior should be produced in the application.

The work reinforced a pattern that became central to my later career: UX was most effective when it remained connected to implementation rather than ending at the delivery of a mockup.

e-tcc.com

I also worked on TCC’s corporate website, e-tcc.com.

I initially assisted Adam Clark and, after the first few months, inherited responsibility for essentially the front end while backend and API work remained outside my ownership.

The site operated in an ASP.NET environment, but my responsibility was specifically the front-end layer.

I stabilized the existing implementation, cleaned up accumulated CSS, converted styling to Sass, and worked on front-end performance and Lighthouse improvements.

The corporate site was not a Section 508 project, and I do not characterize it as one.

I applied normal usability and front-end practices, but not every design decision was mine. One example was a teal color treatment that did not meet accessibility contrast requirements. I identified the issue, but the treatment remained at product owner Steve Fey’s direction.

That distinction is important: professional responsibility includes identifying problems accurately even when the final product decision belongs elsewhere.

Vertex Solutions Group

My work later expanded to Vertex Solutions Group following its acquisition by TCC.

I served as the lead developer on the Vertex web work while JR and Audi concentrated on the visual design.

The initial implementation used Angular 5, and I continued advancing the application as Angular evolved. By my final week at TCC, I had completed the move to Angular 8.

The work included the technically distinctive carousel used for Vertex’s trade-show presence, including the donut and particle effects developed under a compressed schedule.

This project gave me a clearer technical-lead role than some of my earlier TCC work. The visual direction remained collaborative, while I took primary responsibility for turning that direction into the functioning Angular application.

Working Across Disciplines

By this point, my responsibilities at TCC were difficult to describe as exclusively “UX” or exclusively “development.”

I had conducted client-site usability research.

I had participated in product and client Scrum teams.

I had worked alongside business analysts to turn requirements into interaction behavior.

I had maintained and modernized a corporate front end.

And I had become the lead Angular developer on the Vertex work.

The common thread was the interface between intent and implementation.

Sometimes that meant observing a user.

Sometimes it meant prototyping an interaction.

Sometimes it meant Sass.

Sometimes it meant Angular.

The tool changed depending on where the problem actually lived.

Organizational Context

TCC experienced significant organizational and financial instability during the latter portion of my tenure.

The company went through repeated CFO turnover—five CFOs over approximately four years—and experienced payment problems associated with major client work, including Oregon and Michigan.

Those conditions eventually contributed to layoffs.

I was included in the first group of 14 employees laid off, and additional employees resigned during the months that followed.

The circumstances of my departure were therefore organizational rather than a conclusion to the technical or UX work I had been performing.

State of the Work When I Left

By the time I left TCC in June 2019, my role had evolved considerably from where it began four years earlier.

The Oregon usability research had influenced the design direction that fed into Ascend, with Oregon becoming the product’s first client.

I had worked on both the Ascend and Oregon Scrum teams and participated in a BA/UX collaboration model that became useful beyond the original research effort.

I had inherited and stabilized the front end of e-tcc.com, moved its styling toward Sass, and improved its front-end quality and performance.

At Vertex, I had become lead developer and advanced the Angular application from its Angular 5 origins through Angular 8 by my final week.

The lasting value of the TCC experience was the breadth of the work.

It connected direct user observation, UX design, requirements analysis, front-end engineering, product development, and technical leadership inside the same four-year progression.

That combination became the foundation for the UX-engineering role I continued developing afterward.