The App Modernization Platform
Shaping the future of a centralized end-to-end app modernization platform through design strategy and perspective.
HOME
CREATIVE
YEAR
2025 - 2026
ROLE
Design strategy
Product design
Stakeholder management
Cross-team collaboration
User research
TEAM
2 Researchers
2 Product Managers
Chaotic and emerging problem space
A new incubation space was being explored, of modernizing outdated enterprise systems to MongoDB. But this process, run by our internal engineers, was incredibly chaotic.
Ambiguous roles
Disorganized resources
Ad-hoc tools for urgent delivery
No standardization or cross-incubator learning
How might we provide guidance and structure for modernization engineers to more effectively upgrade enterprise customer applications?
Defined the user: App mod personas
To better understand this emerging user group and their workflows, I partnered with two researchers to conduct:
6 in-depth Modernization Factory interviews
8 asynchronous engagement reviews
I then synthesized findings into six distinct personas that make up an app modernization team. This gave product and engineering a shared language, helping us prioritize features, design clearer handoffs, and set a more intentional foundation for the emerging modernization product.
Influenced product vision
I utilized design thinking to facilitate stakeholder discussions. With a more objective eye, I could see where current modernization experiences fell short and identify improvements through various sessions:
1 Current journey walkthrough
2 Architecture brainstorming sessions with 9 modernization SMEs
2 Prioritization sessions
The key steps to how design influenced product strategy and evolved app modernization from a simple MVP to an AI-powered marketable product.
Addressed short term pain points
The initial business goal was speed — ship a lightweight 0→1 marketplace that helped internal teams quickly discover and organize modernization tools to drive paid engagements.
Aligned visions and accelerated iteration
Through real-world feedback, we uncovered a larger need: teams didn’t just need tool awareness — they needed integrated workflows, visibility, access, and standardization.
That insight transformed a simple marketplace into the MongoDB Application Modernization Platform, a unified internal developer tool designed to support our teams in modernizing complex legacy systems at scale.
The vision expanded further to an AI-powered, self-serve platform for external customers, reducing manual effort and increasing scalability.
The AMP design team has begun pairing with PMs, vibe-coding potential prototypes, and exploring AI-powered chatbot experiences to bring this vision to life.
Measured success
AMP Live Usage
By August 2025, majority of live engagements were utilizing AMP and providing critical insights and feedback to P&T.
Manual Modernization Effort
Reduced manual modernization effort and time compared to its traditional counterpart.
Onboarding Time
Reduced onboarding and navigation time through AI simplified descriptions and search.
Learnings
Due to a lack of product driven focus, design became very proactive in advocating for a more user driven, scalable long term vision for app modernization and migration services.
I had to utilize strategic communication, back up every decision with user data, and constantly zoom out conversations to higher level perspectives for engineers and product people in the detail weeds.
What started as a standard product design project turned into a design strategy case of influencing product and engineering leadership with design perspective.
Smooth Scroll
This will hide itself!
This will hide itself!