Building design capability to modernize Air Force weather systems
Summary
As part of our work modernizing weather intelligence delivery for the Air Force, we’re embedding designers and product managers within the Weather Applications Rapid Production/Prototype (WARPspeed) software factory to build the internal capability needed for modern, consistent weather application experiences. By pairing directly with delivery teams, we’ve helped WARPspeed grow from a development-only operation into an organization with real design and product management capacity.
The challenge
Our service design work had unblocked WxPO’s cloud migration and identified the organizational changes needed to move forward. But as teams began delivering products through WARPspeed — WxPO’s software factory — a new gap emerged: the organization could build software, but it couldn’t design it well.
WARPspeed had one designer supporting six teams. Mockups were created in PowerPoint, which put extra burden on developers to interpret intent, slowed delivery, and contributed to growing design debt. There was no shared design language, no component library, and no consistent process for incorporating user feedback. Each team made its own decisions about how applications should look and behave, producing inconsistent experiences across the portfolio.
The siloed working patterns made things worse. Unreliable communication and a lack of shared workflows led to rework, missed dependencies, and duplicated effort. WARPspeed had the development capacity to ship — but without design infrastructure, the products it shipped weren’t meeting the needs of the forecasters, pilots, and controllers who depended on them.
The solution
We use a player-coach model — embedding our experts within WARPspeed delivery teams while building organization-wide capacity in user research, product design, content design, and agile product management. This approach lets us improve real products in flight while strengthening the practices that make high-quality delivery repeatable.
On multiple WARPspeed teams — including BIFROST and Environmental Workflow Application — we paired directly with staff to build user-centered design skills across the delivery life cycle. Rather than handing off recommendations, our designers and product managers worked shoulder-to-shoulder with government counterparts on live projects, coaching through practice so skills transferred through real work rather than theory alone.
Shared practices and a common design language replaced the siloed approaches that had led to inconsistent experiences. We developed a user-centered design playbook, ran lunch-and-learns, and launched a recurring “Tip Tuesday” series to make design thinking accessible across the organization. To scale consistency further, we built a WxPO design system, supported a design community of practice, and taught core skills like prototyping and user research.
Fragmented tools had been part of the problem, so modern tooling became part of the fix. We recommended organization-level tooling standards, trained designers and developers on Figma, cleaned up Confluence spaces, and onboarded more staff to Jira. Replacing fragmented, outdated tools with a common stack reduced handoff friction and freed teams to focus on design quality rather than tool workarounds.
Delivery structures improved alongside design practices. We strengthened backlog management, clarified roles and responsibilities, and recommended improvements for integrated software testing. These operational changes helped teams move faster without sacrificing quality or losing sight of user needs.
At the leadership level, cross-team alignment became a priority. We facilitated workshops to map dependencies, recommended a new strategy and integration role at the WARPspeed level, and introduced product management activities that gave leadership the visibility needed to coordinate across a complex, multi-team portfolio.
I’ve been in this business for a while, and this is the first time I’ve seen people advocating for users at this level, and also seeing stakeholders buy-in. We’re headed in the right direction and our users are seeing that.
WxPO Leadership
The results
- Grew design capacity from one designer to a functioning design practice across three WARPspeed teams, confirmed through a comprehensive maturity assessment
- Introduced Figma as the standard design tool, improving user testing workflows and reducing accumulated design and technical debt
- Built a WxPO design system and component library, establishing consistent patterns across the application portfolio
- Improved backlog quality and visibility by centering user needs in prioritization, writing more detailed user stories, and increasing ticket transparency across teams
- Drove culture change toward user advocacy, with research practices now embedded early and often in the delivery life cycle