Product Certification Platform

CLIENT

Green Seal

Industry

Non-Profit NGO

Role

Product Designer & Frontend Engineer

Duration

Multi-month
Phase 1 - partial delivery

Scope

  • Owned the end-to-end frontend system from interaction design through production deployment.
  • Defined scalable UI and CSS architecture to support long-term feature growth.
  • Established delivery pipelines and production standards from version control to cloud deployment.
  • Reviewed and guided frontend implementation across multiple contributors.
  • Balanced design fidelity, performance, accessibility, and operational constraints.

Context

Green Seal certifies products based on complex chemical and material standards. Their existing tools were fragmented, manual, and difficult to scale as certification volume increased. The organization needed a system that could support manufacturers, customers, and certification staff—each with different responsibilities, incentives, and access constraints—without exposing proprietary chemical data.

“This system was designed under tight regulatory and delivery constraints, with priority placed on workflow correctness, permission boundaries, and validation logic over visual polish. The interface intentionally favors clarity and consistency of behavior over final UI refinement.”

Problem

Green Seal’s certification process relied on disconnected workflows, spreadsheets, and manual review. Manufacturers needed to submit raw material data, customers needed to assemble formulations using those materials, and certification staff needed to validate combinations against evolving standards.

The challenge was not only usability, but trust, security, and correctness:

  • Manufacturers could not expose proprietary chemical compositions.
  • Customers needed actionable feedback without seeing protected data.
  • Certification staff needed full visibility across submissions, reviews, and outcomes.
  • All parties needed to collaborate indirectly through the system without leaking sensitive information.

We need a solution that can handle both certification for formula creator and quantify material manufacturers.

Doug Gatlen
Green Seal - CEO

This required a multi-tenant, permission-aware platform that balanced transparency with confidentiality.

Goals

  • Design a system that supports three distinct user tiers with different permissions and mental models
  • Prevent disclosure of proprietary chemical compositions while still enabling certification feedback
  • Reduce manual review effort for certification staff
  • Create a scalable foundation that could evolve alongside Green Seal’s standards
  • Integrate directly with Green Seal’s existing CRM and internal tools
  • Enable certification staff to quickly identify where attention is needed across submissions (at-risk, blocked, and healthy reviews)

Users & Access Model

The platform was structured around three tightly-scoped user groups, each owning a different layer of data.

Manufacturers

  • Own raw material definitions and chemical compositions
  • Submit materials once and reuse them across multiple customers compositions
  • Never see customer formulas or certification decisions downstream

Customers

  • Assemble formulas using approved raw materials
  • Receive pass/fail feedback and guidance without access to raw chemical details
  • Manage multiple submissions and certification states

Green Seal Certification

  • Full access to material data, formulas, and validation results
  • Review flagged formula combinations and provide structured feedback
  • Maintain and evolve certification rules over time

Each tier required separate authentication, permissions, and visibility rules while still operating within a shared system.

Constraints

  • Strict confidentiality requirements around chemical composition
  • Legacy CRM as system of record
  • Complex third-party validation logic
  • Non-technical users across all tiers
  • Regulatory accuracy requirements

Process

I worked through multiple working sessions with the CEO and certification staff to map the real certification workflow—not the idealized one.

  • Whiteboarding flows with certification experts
  • Validating assumptions with real submissions
  • Refining terminology to match regulatory language
  • Testing edge cases where data visibility could break trust

Rather than starting with screens, the work focused on:

  • Data ownership
  • Permission boundaries
  • State transitions (submitted, flagged, approved, rejected)

System Architecture (UX)

The product was designed as a layered system, not a single interface.

  • Raw materials and formulas as separate entities
  • Validation results abstracted into readable outcomes
  • Feedback flows downstream without exposing source data
  • Clear ownership and visibility for every object

Third-Party Validation & Feedback

A third-party validation engine flagged disallowed materials, invalid combinations, and threshold violations.

The feedback model:

  • Translated technical failures into actionable guidance
  • Preserved manufacturer confidentiality
  • Allowed staff intervention when needed

Operational Prioritization Layer

Beyond individual submissions, the system was designed to surface where attention was most needed. Certification staff were provided with:

  • A clear hierarchy of review states (failing, flagged, progressing, approved)
  • Aggregated signals highlighting review backlog and potential risk
  • Suggested next submissions to review based on validation state and downstream impact

This enabled certification staff to manage workload strategically rather than reacting to individual submissions as they arrived.

Failures were treated as states, not dead ends—enabling iteration.

Design Execution

  • Designed end-to-end UX across all three tiers
  • Created reusable submission, review, and feedback patterns
  • Defined access-aware components by role
  • Minimized cognitive load for non-technical users

Outcome

Phase one reached approximately 60% completion before the initiative was paused due to shifting organizational priorities.

  • Established a scalable certification model
  • Clarified internal workflows
  • Reduced ambiguity around data ownership and security
  • Created a strong foundation for future implementation

What I’d Do Next

  • Harden validation feedback loops
  • Expand audit tooling for certification staff
  • Introduce progressive disclosure for advanced customers
  • Formalize a documented design system

Reflection

This project reinforced that complex systems are trust problems before they are design problems.

Success depended on defining boundaries, responsibilities, and incentives across multiple stakeholders.