Improving IT Ecosystems Through Evidence-Based UX

When a Technology Platform Underserves Its People, the Whole Organization Feels It

ServiceNow is the front door to IT at UVM Health System. It is where fifteen thousand employees go when something is broken, when they need access, when they need help. It is, in the clearest sense, a service experience and for years, it was not living up to the needs of the people who depended on it.

IT knew it. They heard it in the calls they fielded, in the workarounds staff had built to avoid the portal entirely, in the nurse who said, without hesitation, that she avoided ServiceNow "at all costs." But knowing something needs to improve and knowing how to improve it, and in what order, and to what standard, are different problems entirely. That's where my team and I came in.

I was brought in to lead a rigorous, human-centered assessment of the ServiceNow platform. The goal was not to produce a list of complaints. It was to produce a body of evidence grounded in real user behavior, evaluated against industry standards that IT could use not just to address immediate friction points, but to guide their work for years to come.

What followed was not a single project. It became an ongoing relationship, one I was invited back to continue in 2026, two years after the original engagement, by the new head of ServiceNow. That invitation is its own kind of outcome.