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Designing a role-based publishing system in a highly complex domain
Context & role
Rivyr is a SaaS platform for managing academic journals and conferences—from article submission to final publication. The publishing domain is process-heavy, rule-driven, and involves many roles working in sequence and in parallel.
My role: UX Designer
I worked closely with product and subject matter experts, iterating on workflows and permissions as our understanding of the scientific publishing process evolved.
Scope
Product Landing page
Super Admin Dashboard
Publisher Dashboard
Publisher public website
Journal Dashboard
Journal public website
The challenge
This project wasn’t difficult because of UI scale—it was difficult because we didn’t fully know the publishing workflow at the start.
The system needed to support many roles (authors, editors, production, admins), each with:
different permissions,
different responsibilities,
and dependencies on one another.
Designing without clarity here would break the product.
How the design evolved
Instead of assuming a perfect process, we treated the workflow itself as something to discover and refine.
V1: focused on the “happy path” from submission to publication
What broke: overlapping roles, unclear states, visibility issues, and non-linear steps
V2+: refined permissions, clearer manuscript states, better visibility, and guardrails to prevent mistakes
Iteration & not polish was the design work.
Project Outcomes
A scalable, role-based publishing system supporting multiple journals and publishers
Clearer editorial responsibilities and handoffs
A shared understanding of the publishing workflow across product, design, and engineering
Approach & principles
Designing Rivyr meant accepting ambiguity early, iterating fast, and prioritizing clarity and responsibility over surface-level UI. Working closely with key steakholders was very important to understand the domain and design for their need.
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