UI/UX Case Study · Brooklyn Mettlach

Visual Edge
Signal Over Noise

01 — EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

From Overload to Clarity

Visual Edge is an AI-powered adaptive readability and workflow intelligence system designed to help every person at a law firm — regardless of role, department, or cognitive style — automatically surface what matters most across documents, calendars, and inboxes.

Built for the Vinson & Elkins GenAI Hackathon, Visual Edge addresses one of the most universal problems in modern professional work: the gap between information received and information processed. The solution is not to generate more content or to automate decisions — it is to make the right information visible, in the right format, at the right moment.

The information was always there. Visual Edge makes sure it doesn't compete equally for your attention.

Visual Edge operates in three progressive phases — Help Me See, Help Me Prioritize, Help Me Remember — each building on the last, and each designed to run entirely on tools V&E has already approved: Harvey AI, Microsoft Copilot, and Zoom AI Companion. The project introduces zero new software. It is a formatting and workflow intelligence layer on top of what already exists.

02 — THE PROBLEM

Information Overload is Not a Personal Failing. It is Math.

Modern workplaces generate more information per day than any person can reasonably prioritize unaided. This is not a motivation problem, a skill problem, or a time management problem. It is a structural problem created by tools that were designed to deliver information — not to surface it.

The result is a daily experience shared across every role in a law firm:

An inbox with 400 unread emails, where the message that requires action today is buried beneath newsletters, reply-all threads, and low-priority forwards.

A calendar with 11 overlapping meetings, where your name is assigned to three of them — in the location field, invisible unless you hover over every block.

A 45-page discovery document where the critical deadline is in paragraph eight, sentence three, with no visual distinction from the surrounding dense text.

A policy update that arrived in paragraph seven of a forwarded email from two weeks ago.

A client-specific preference that lived in one person's head — and that person is on vacation.

A slide deck that arrived at 7 AM for a 9 AM meeting, sitting in an inbox nobody has time to scan.

The consequences are not abstract. A missed dial-in confirmation. A recording that never starts. A client who walks into a partner-level meeting and something is wrong with the room. A legal deadline buried in a dense document that surfaces too late. These are real, recurring errors — and they affect everyone in the firm, from senior partners to the people who make their meetings run.

Who Experiences This Most

The challenge is universal — but it is most acute for the people managing the operational layer of legal work. AV coordinators tracking 14 meetings in a single day. Conference services teams managing room setups for dozens of organizers with different preferences. Legal assistants responsible for deadlines across multiple matters. Business development teams tracking client-specific context across years of relationship history.

These professionals share a common problem: the tools they use were not designed with their cognitive workflow in mind. Visual Edge was.

03 — RESEARCH & INSPIRATION

How Humans Already Solve This — By Hand

The core insight behind Visual Edge came from studying something every professional already does: they build personal systems to make signal stand out from noise.

Look at the notebooks, annotated documents, and color-coded calendars of any experienced professional. You will see the same techniques appear again and again — not because they were taught, but because the brain evolved to need them.

People have always known they need to solve the cognitive overload problem. Visual Edge learns from their instincts — and applies them at scale.

Visual Techniques That Reduce Cognitive Load

The research also confirmed something important about accessibility: these techniques are not optional enhancements. For neurodivergent users, aging staff, and anyone with visual processing differences, the format of information is the difference between comprehension and confusion. Visual hierarchy is not a nice-to-have — it is a cognitive accessibility tool.

04 — SOLUTION OVERVIEW

Visual Edge: A Human-Centered Information Prioritization System

Visual Edge is not a summarization tool. It is not an AI that generates content or replaces human judgment. It is a cognitive formatting layer — a system that takes information that already exists and restructures it so that what matters most is impossible to miss.

The goal is simple: help every person in the firm process information more effectively, with less effort, in less time, and with fewer errors — regardless of their role, their cognitive style, or their experience level.

Each phase is valuable on its own. Together, they represent a fundamentally different relationship between professionals and the information they work with every day.

05 — PRODUCT ROADMAP

Three Phases. Each Builds on the Last.

06 — ACCESSIBILITY & HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

Designed for Every Brain, Every Role, Every Need

Visual Edge was built with a foundational belief: the format of information is not neutral. How something is presented determines whether it is comprehensible — and for a significant portion of the workforce, the standard format is the barrier.

This is not a small population. Neurodivergent professionals, staff with visual processing differences, aging employees whose reading needs evolve over time, and anyone working under high cognitive load — which is everyone, at peak pressure — all benefit from information that adapts to them rather than demanding they adapt to it.

Adaptive Formatting Controls

Visual Edge Phase 1 allows every user to configure their own display layer. This is not a settings panel hidden three menus deep — it is the core of the product. Users choose how their information is rendered:

Font size and line spacing — for aging staff and visual accessibility

Highlight color and intensity — neon, high-contrast, or subtle, depending on cognitive preference

Text weight and capitalization — ALL CAPS deadlines for users who need visual urgency signals

Color palette — accessible color combinations for users with color vision differences

Information density — compact for experienced users, expanded with more context for those who prefer it

Alert style — inline badges, sidebar flags, or full-screen overlays based on preference

Same document. Same information. Completely different rendering — calibrated to how each person's brain processes best.

Why This Matters for the Firm

Accessibility is not a compliance checkbox. It is a performance strategy. When information is presented in a format that works for every person on a team, the entire team performs better. Missed deadlines decrease. Errors decrease. The cognitive burden of parsing dense text before you can act on it decreases.

Visual Edge extends this to the full workforce — from the most senior partner reviewing a 200-page brief to the AV coordinator scanning 14 meeting assignments before 8 AM. The same underlying technology. The same zero new tools. A completely personalized experience.

07 — MY ROLE

Responsibilities & Contributions

Visual Edge was conceived, designed, and delivered as an individual contribution — from initial problem identification through executive presentation at the hackathon. The following describes the full scope of work.

08 — TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY

Built With the Tools Available

Visual Edge was produced using a deliberately curated AI-assisted workflow — combining large language models, presentation tools, and video production in a pipeline that would not have been feasible without generative AI. Every tool in this list was used directly and meaningfully.

09 — DELIVERABLES

Complete Project Output

The following deliverables were produced for the Visual Edge hackathon submission. All outputs were designed to meet executive presentation standards and to demonstrate the product concept with maximum clarity and visual impact.

10 — LESSONS LEARNED

What This Project Taught Me

Communicating Complex Ideas Visually

The most technically sophisticated idea in the room loses if it can't be understood in 30 seconds. Visual Edge required translating concepts from cognitive psychology, AI workflow design, and enterprise software architecture into visuals that anyone could grasp immediately. The discipline this required — ruthless simplification without loss of depth — is the skill I developed most through this project.

Presenting to Executive Audiences

Executive judges are not evaluating your technical knowledge. They are evaluating whether they would fund it, use it, or recommend it. That requires a completely different kind of communication — shorter, more concrete, more emotionally resonant, and much more focused on the problem than on the solution. I learned to lead with the pain, not the product.

AI-Assisted Design Workflows

Working with Claude as a creative and technical collaborator fundamentally changed how I think about production timelines. Deliverables that would have required weeks with a traditional design team were produced in days — because the AI could handle the implementation layer while I focused on direction, judgment, and refinement. The skill is not using the AI. The skill is knowing what to ask for, recognizing quality output, and iterating with precision.

Accessibility-Focused Thinking

Starting with accessibility as a design constraint — rather than adding it afterward — made the product stronger for everyone. The features built for neurodivergent users (neon highlights, larger type, spacing, high contrast) turned out to be features that every user benefited from. Inclusive design is not a tradeoff. It is a quality multiplier.

Innovation Under Time Constraints

A hackathon is a compressed simulation of real product development — the same creative pressure, the same prioritization decisions, the same tension between polish and substance. The lesson is that constraint is clarifying. When you cannot do everything, you discover what actually matters. Every decision I made — which deliverables to build, which features to describe, which questions to prepare — sharpened my understanding of the core product value.

Product Storytelling

A product that cannot be explained to a non-technical audience does not yet have a clear value proposition. The work of making Visual Edge explainable — through demos, before/after comparisons, real calendar data, and a narrative arc from overwhelm to clarity — forced clarity about what the product actually was. Story and strategy are not separate activities. Story is how strategy becomes real.

11 — REFLECTION

What Visual Edge Revealed

Visual Edge began as a response to a specific frustration — a calendar too crowded to read, a name buried in a location field, a meeting missed because the signal was identical to the noise. What it became was something larger: a product philosophy about how AI should work in professional environments.

The most important design decision in the entire project was also the least technical: Visual Edge does not replace human judgment. It does not decide what matters. It does not automate action. It makes the important thing visible so that a person can decide. That constraint — AI as perception, not agency — turned out to be the entire product.

The best AI tools are not the ones that do the most. They are the ones that free people to bring their judgment to what actually requires it.

This project revealed strengths I had not fully articulated before:

Product thinking — the ability to identify the real problem beneath the surface problem, and to propose solutions that scale

Creative problem solving — finding the unexpected connection between handwritten note-taking research and enterprise AI deployment

Visual storytelling — translating abstract cognitive concepts into demonstrations that create the 'I feel that' moment in an audience

AI workflow design — developing a production methodology that uses AI as a genuine creative collaborator, not a shortcut

Accessibility strategy — centering human difference as a design input rather than an accommodation

Innovation leadership — conceiving, building, and delivering a portfolio-quality product under hackathon constraints

The feedback that meant the most was simple: 'I've felt exactly that problem.' When a product idea lands that way — before the demo, before the slides, at the problem statement — it means the product is real. Visual Edge is real. The gap it fills is real. And the work required to communicate that clearly is work I am proud of.