Space Cowboy Design - Product & UX/UI Design

The sales team was losing deals because no one could find the answer.

Introduction

VirTra builds law enforcement and military training simulators used by agencies across the country and around the world. Their content library had grown to nearly 1,000 training scenarios but when a customer asked "does your system come with active shooter training?" during a demo, the honest answer was: let me get back to you.

Company

VirTra

Year

2025

Platform

Web

Role

Product Design • UX/UI

Scope of work

Content Discovery • Taxonomy • System Design

The Problem

During live sales demos, customers would ask straightforward questions. What scenarios come with the V-300 Simulator? Do you have anything in Spanish? How much de-escalation content is available?

Experienced sales reps could answer general questions, but specifics required the Content team. And showing a customer the actual content? That meant having a simulator running. There was no way to browse or demonstrate the library on its own.

During live sales demos, customers would ask straightforward questions. What scenarios come with the V-300 Simulator? Do you have anything in Spanish? How much de-escalation content is available?

For a company selling simulators in the $250,000–$500,000 range, that gap was costing conversations.

Early concepts were designed for tablet before shifting to a web platform. When the CEO pushed for a Google-style search box during a design review, I pushed back. VirTra's content is inherently visual. I made the case, the designs backed it up, and visual discovery became the foundation of the product.

A large group photo of diverse team members gathered in an industrial-style space with arched ceiling.

The Gold Master Spreadsheet: VirTra's source of truth for nearly 1,000 training scenarios, maintained manually across teams.

My Role

I owned this project end-to-end on the design side. From initial research through shipped product over four months. The work started with deep research: interviewing the sales team to understand exactly where conversations were breaking down, and auditing the Gold Master Spreadsheet to map every content attribute and determine what belonged in the filter system.

Early wireframes were turned into lightweight AI-assisted prototypes using Figma Make, getting something tangible in front of stakeholders fast. That early testing surfaced UX issues and requirements that static mocks would have missed. High-fidelity design followed, built on the existing VOS design system to keep VirTra's product ecosystem cohesive and predictable across touchpoints.

The taxonomy audit alone uncovered years of inconsistent tagging, singular vs plural, abbreviations vs full terms, duplicate categories, etc.

Rationalizing 120+ tags down to 75 and establishing a cleaner content organization standard became a foundational part of the project.

Training scenarios catalogued

Stakeholders across Sales, Content,

0months

Research to shipped product

0months

Research to shipped product

0rounds

Prototype testing rounds with stakeholders

0rounds

Prototype testing rounds with stakeholders

Early wireframe exploring the content browser layout.

Prototype flow across 3 rounds of stakeholder testing.

Collaborators

Sales Team

The primary users and ultimate decision makers. Their real-world demo breakdowns defined the requirements, not assumptions, but actual gaps in live conversations.

Head of Content

Resource and decision maker. Deep knowledge of the library's structure and inconsistencies made them critical to the taxonomy audit and content organization work.

Content Team

Produced and standardized the visual assets: thumbnails, trailers, and metadata to spec. Their work made the visual-first approach actually viable at scale.

Product Manager

Early concepts and product direction. Long tenure at VirTra provided valuable institutional knowledge on what had been tried before and why.

Development Team

Handoff and implementation. Worked closely to ensure design system components translated cleanly into the build.

CEO

Final sign-off. Presented to directly during design reviews, including the visual discovery debate that shaped the product's core direction.

I drove the project, setting up syncs, leading design reviews, and keeping stakeholders aligned from research through handoff.

This wasn't a project where direction came from above. The problem needed to be surfaced and shaped before it could be solved. That meant getting the right people in the room early, asking the right questions, and building enough shared understanding that decisions could move fast when they needed to.

Approach

Principles first

Good design doesn't start with screens. It starts with understanding the problem well enough that the right solution becomes obvious.

Order from Chaos — Hundreds of scenarios. One coherent system.

The content library had grown organically for years with no consistent structure. The first job was making sense of it, auditing every tag, category, and attribute before designing a single screen. Structure had to come before interface.

No Wasted Pixels — Only what the sales team needed. Nothing they didn't.

The top-level view was intentionally restrained, simulator compatibility, category, language, and a thumbnail. Enough to answer the question, not enough to slow the conversation. Detail lived deeper, available when needed.

Built to Last — Built on the same foundation as VirTra's core products.

The interface reused the VOS design system, the same components, patterns, and interactions used across VirTra's simulator platform. That decision meant the tool felt familiar on day one and could scale as the library grew.

Earned Trust — Designed around real workflows, not ideal ones.

Every decision was tested against one question: would this help someone answer a customer question in real time? That meant designing for live demos, fast decisions, and the pressure of a sales call. Not a controlled environment.

Order from Chaos — Hundreds of scenarios. One coherent system.

No Wasted Pixels — Only what the sales team needed. Nothing they didn't.

Built to Last — Built on the same foundation as VirTra's core products.

Earned Trust — Designed around real workflows, not ideal ones.

The Solution

A visual content browser built for the speed and confidence of a live sales conversation.

An unexpected benefit of the project was internal alignment. As the system took shape, it surfaced inconsistencies in tagging and metadata, prompting the Content team to clean up records and establish clearer standards moving forward.

Search & Filter

The filter panel was the heart of the tool. Sales reps could narrow down by simulator compatibility, category, language, use-of-force options, and more, with a live count updating in real time to show exactly how many scenarios matched. No waiting, no guessing, no follow-up emails.

Search with recent queries surfaced for faster repeat lookups.

Filter panel with live result count updates instantly.

Custom Lists

Sales reps could build and save custom lists ahead of a call, curating content around a specific customer's training interests before the conversation started. It kept demos focused and personal. It was also the foundation for customer-facing course building and custom playlists planned for the next phase of the product.

Creating a new list to curate content for a customer demo.

My Lists view with saved and favorited scenarios.

Home & Discovery

The home screen led with what mattered most. Featured simulators, new and upcoming content, and recently added scenarios. Rather than dropping users into a blank search, the home screen gave immediate context and surfaced content worth knowing about.

The home screen leads with featured simulators and recently added content. Giving users immediate context & discovery.

Scenario Detail View

Every scenario had a dedicated detail view surfacing everything a sales rep or customer needed. Duration, tags, capabilities, available languages, and V-VICTA certification status. Information that previously required a Content team lookup was now one click away.

Video scenario details: tags, languages, and capabilities.

V-VICTA details: scenarios, objectives, and course documents.

Outcomes

Mission Library shipped and the sales team picked it up fast. Within weeks it was live on customer calls. Reps were using the search and filter panel to answer questions in real time that previously required a follow-up email or a call to the Content team.

The feedback was specific: the live scenario count responding to filter selections gave sales reps confidence mid-conversation. Customers responded positively to being shown the content visually rather than having it described to them.

For the first time, sales could demonstrate VirTra's full content library without a simulator running. A web-based tool meant reps could pull it up anywhere, on a laptop, in a meeting room, during a call, and walk customers through scenario detail views and trailers on the spot.

The content could finally sell itself.

An unexpected outcome was internal. As the system took shape, it surfaced years of inconsistent metadata, prompting the Content team to clean up records and establish standards that hadn't existed before.

The work also became the foundation for the next phase, a customer-facing content browser built on the same system, giving buyers direct access to VirTra's library before a simulator ever ships.