About Mission UX

Mission UX is a blog and newsletter about humane, reliable tools for high-stakes work—such as government, defense, intelligence, cybersecurity, health, energy, and public safety. We cover AI done responsibly: privacy-preserving, user-controlled, transparent about limits, and designed to support rather than replace. Expect field-tested patterns, checklists, diagrams, and candid lessons from the front lines of mission-critical software.

Why this exists

Most UX advice assumes consumer apps and endless A/B tests. Mission work is different: limited access to users, sensitive data, complex workflows, and failure modes that actually matter.

Who this is for

  • UX and product practitioners working in (or entering) gov, defense, cyber, health, or other high-risk domains.
  • Leads and managers who need repeatable processes, hiring rubrics, and coaching tools.
  • Engineers and analysts who want UX that respects operations, reliability, and security.
  • Decision-makers looking for clarity on why (and how) to invest in UX for mission outcomes.

If you care about speed, reliability, safety, and ethics, you’re in the right place.

What you’ll find here

  • Field Guides & Playbooks: step-by-step methods you can apply Monday morning.
  • Case Studies (sanitized): before/after, decision points, metrics that moved.
  • Usable Security Patterns: MFA under stress, least-privilege UX, auditability by design.
  • Operational Handoffs: runbooks, acceptance criteria, and “definition of done” for ops.
  • Career Tracks: decoding mission UX jobs, clearance-friendly portfolios, negotiating in contracting environments.
  • Talks & Diagrams: slides, system maps, and poster-style references you can share with teams.

Editorial principles

  1. Evidence over aesthetics. Visual polish matters, but outcomes matter more.
  2. Constraints are features. We design for limited access, red tape, real risk.
  3. Make it teachable. Every post has a takeaway: a checklist, diagram, rubric, or decision tree.
  4. Accessibility & inclusivity. Clear language, alt text, contrast-safe visuals, and respect for diverse teams and users.
  5. Integrity. We mark speculation as speculation, cite sources, and disclose conflicts.

Ethics & OPSEC

Mission UX never shares sensitive, classified, or proprietary details. Artifacts and stories are anonymized, time-shifted, aggregated, or reconstructed to protect people and programs. When in doubt, it stays out.

What we don’t publish: specific incident data, unredacted screenshots, vendor-locked configurations, or anything that increases risk to people or systems.

Community guidelines

Mission UX is for good-faith practitioners. Disagree with ideas, not people. No harassment, doxxing, or “just add a manual” drive-bys. We can hold strong opinions and remain kind.