Context
IDX’s internal tooling was scattered. The closest thing to a home was DASH — but DASH was a mess: less a platform than an inventory of tools, with no shared UX, no real information architecture, no common visual language, and plenty of dead, out-of-use tools still hanging around. And plenty of tooling lived outside DASH entirely — standalone tools spread across the org. None of it used Intuit’s design system. New hires — many of them short-term contractors — struggled to find anything, and even veterans burned time hunting across disconnected tools.
The vision
I wrote the vision for a single, unified platform nine months before we got to build it. The hard part wasn’t the document — it was the alignment: I drove cross-functional and leadership buy-in to rally everyone behind one platform. Once we had the mandate, I translated the vision into an actionable roadmap and led it through execution to production.
What we built
(Overview below.) We turned that sprawl into one coherent platform — IDX Studio:
- Modern UX on Intuit’s design system, replacing a patchwork of styles.
- Workflow-based navigation and IA, organized around how people actually work.
- IDX Agent — a conversational AI front door to the platform.
- Quick search — jump to any entity by ID in a single click.
- Centralized audit log and RBAC, built into the platform.
- Contribution guidelines requiring every team to build on the design system and shared standards.
Shipping it — lean and fast
We kept execution deliberately lean. We shipped the first version of the new platform within 2 months of kickoff, then built on it sprint by sprint. In under two months of getting the mandate, we consolidated 20+ services and tools — scattered across DASH and elsewhere — into IDX Studio.
Results
- IDX Studio in production, replacing DASH as IDX’s home base.
- 20+ tools consolidated into one platform in under two months.
- A platform-wide design system, information architecture, RBAC, and audit log where there had been none.
- A standout quick search that reaches any entity in a single click — one of the most-loved additions.
What I learned
The technical build was the easy part. The real work of a platform play is vision and alignment — getting many teams to trade their own tools and standards for a shared one — and then executing lean enough to show value fast. Setting the vision early and over-investing in buy-in is what made everything after it possible.
