Parthenon Case Study · Mimi Newman

Client: Parthenon Labs
Role: Lead Product Designer, fractional
Duration: February 2025 to July 2025
Users: Councilpersons, chiefs of staff, caseworkers, communications directors
Surfaces: Desktop web application, Microsoft Outlook plug-in, mobile app
Scope: Product strategy, information architecture, agentic AI pattern, design system, 5 modules shipped
Tools: Figma, Figma Make, user interviews, Claude Code for prototype review
Outcome: V1 shipped across desktop, Outlook, and mobile. Design system, 5-module IA, campaign builder, agentic plug-in.

01 · Situation

Chaos and a short runway.

The unknowns

No category precedent. Council offices cobble together Gmail, Outlook, Mailchimp, Salesforce, and voter databases.
No design system, no settled IA, no v1 scope. A vision and a wedge, not a product spec.
Four distinct user types: councilperson, chief of staff, caseworker, comms director.
Fractional six-month engagement. Every week counted.

The risk

Burn runway on scattered screens that didn't cohere as a product.
Miss the fundraising and early-customer window a startup lives on.
Ship something generic staffers would route around back to their Gmail inbox.

02 · Task

Set the blueprint, not just build screens.

Deliver the product vision, IA, agentic AI pattern, and design system V1 could ship on and V2 could scale from.

03 · Action

The strategic blueprint.

Pillar A

De-risking via proxy data and rapid prototyping.

Proxy patterns from adjacent markets, tested in weekly Figma prototypes against real council workflows.

What we needed	Precedent I studied	What I kept
CRM data model	Salesforce, HubSpot	Entity graph: Constituent, Case, Organization, Caseworker, linked across every surface.
Case management	Zendesk, Linear	Case numbering, status chips, assignment, SLA follow-up.
Voter data	NGP VAN, PDI	Rich filter dimensions on behavior, affiliation, and issue positions.
Campaign builder	Mailchimp, Klaviyo	Four-step wizard with live audience sizing.
Agentic assist	Linear Agents, Copilot	Suggested next actions with reasoning the user can read and override.

Risky assumptions became next week's prototype test; safe-to-defer went on a parking lot.

Pillar B

UX and AI system architecture.

Five-module information architecture

Home. Quick Actions, Trending Topics with sentiment, Inbox and Outreach previews.
Inbox. One feed across emails, cases, and outreach replies.
Audiences. CRM at 500K-contact capacity, 12+ filter dimensions, auto-detected cohort insights.
Outreach. One campaign builder, three channels.
Insights & Tools. Analytics, segments, settings.

Inbox activity feed showing threaded replies between caseworkers, constituents, and city departments like Police Department and Electric Services, with case numbers (PD-125, ES-100) and status chips. — Inbox: one feed across emails, cases, and replies to outreach, with the Constituent, Caseworker, Organization, and Case numbers linked on every item.

Unified entity model

Constituent, caseworker, organization, and case: the four atoms, linked on every surface.

Constituent profile. Contact information, political and civic tags, issue positions, voter behavior, and every linked case and email. One page, no tab-switching.

Agentic Outlook plug-in

Caseworkers were never going to leave Outlook, so the platform meets them inside it.

Outlook plug-in panel on the right side of an Outlook window showing a constituent card for Jasmine Adams with tags ID Match, In District, First Time Contact, Active Voter, an AI classification of the email as a Service Request about Pothole Infrastructure, and three suggested next actions: Create new case, Reply to constituent, Forward to Government Department. — Agentic Outlook plug-in. Reads the inbound email, classifies it, enriches with constituent context, and suggests next actions with reasoning the staffer can read, override, or send with one click.

People directory with 500,000 contacts, columns for Name, Address, Affiliations, Voter Insights, Cases, and Latest Case Status. The right pane shows auto-detected Cohort Insights including Environmental Advocates with 3,105 members and 38 percent activity increase, Union Members with 6,000 members and 500 emails about a strike, and Traffic Complainers with 9,000 members and 47 percent complaining about 3rd Street. — Audiences directory. Twelve-plus filter dimensions, plus auto-detected Cohort Insights that surface what's trending (for example, 9,000 Traffic Complainers, 47 percent complaining about 3rd Street this month). Each insight is a one-click starting point for a campaign.

One campaign builder, three channels

Newsletters, SMS, and press releases on the same four-step wizard (Compose, Audience, Schedule, Send) with live audience sizing and pause-to-edit on scheduled sends.

Campaign builder audience step showing Total audience reach of 152,000 contacts, with selected segment chips for Registered Voters (100,000), Primarily Dem (50,000), and Pro-Life (2,000), and a dropdown to add Democrats, All voters, or a prior Email blast segment. — Audience step. Live audience sizing as segments are added or removed, so comms directors never guess at reach.

Press release composer in the same wizard, with a sample press release headline reading Councilmember Williams Launches New Constituent Engagement Initiative for Council District 4, status Scheduled, and a Pause Schedule to Edit button. — Same wizard, different output. Press releases, newsletters, and SMS all reuse the pattern, with pause-to-edit protecting scheduled sends.

Design system

Civic blue tokens extended into status chips, tables, forms, modals, and the Outlook plug-in's compact scale.

Civic Blue#1E71E8

Ink#101828

Pillar C

Managing ambiguity and cross-functional alignment.

Tiered user model, not a single persona

Role	Primary surface	Primary job
Councilperson	Home, Insights	See what matters, decide where to act.
Chief of staff	Inbox	Triage, assign, hold the SLA.
Caseworker	Outlook plug-in, Case detail	Execute and close cases.
Comms director	Outreach	Reach the right residents fast.

Meet users where they are

Outlook plug-in prioritized ahead of the standalone web app for caseworkers. Zero behavior-change cost on day one.

Decide at 70 percent, revisit at 90

Cohort insights shipped before PMF data on which cohorts mattered, because the pattern was right regardless. Weekly design critique with engineering and founders made trade-offs together, in the room.

04 · Result

Scalable guardrails, not just screens.

Quantitative impact

5Top-level modules shipped in 6 months

500K+Contact CRM capacity

150K+Audience reach per campaign

3Outreach channels on one wizard

12+Filter dimensions on the voter DB

0Behavior-change cost for the Outlook plug-in

Scalable legacy

Design system. Tokens, type, and components documented in Figma. Holds the next ten features without rework.

Unified IA. Five-module architecture handles today's council product and tomorrow's verticals (county, state, mayor's office).

Campaign builder pattern. One wizard, reused across newsletters, SMS, and press releases.

Agentic classification framework. Prompt structure for inbound email the team can extend to new issue types without redesigning the UI.