Designing Macro Editing Functionality for GNC - reducing macro editing time.

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A video of the feature. from search to saving any edits done.

🎯 My Role

UX Designer

Led end-to-end UX for GNC’s Global macro configuration functionality in the Project Cost estimator, from research to high-fidelity Figma prototypes and usability testing.

👥 The team

Project Manager: Karthik Sattiraju

2 UX Designers, 1 Product Manager, 1 Product Owner, 2 Backend developers, 2 Frontend developers & 1 QA

⏳ Duration

2 Months (Aug – Oct 2025)

📍Project Context

As a UX designer, I worked on the Global Macro Configuration feature, a self-service dashboard that gave the non-technical GNC team direct control over editing macro values, something they'd never had before. This was designed for an elderly audience, which displayed familiar terms, high-contrast layouts, and progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load, enabling quick changes without jargon or delays.

Background and Problem

So people couldn’t edit “MACROS” without IT delays? Alright!

Picture yourself as a PM of the GNC team,

You've spotted a material cost shift that needs a quick tweak to your macro cost across all the forms. But instead of just changing it, you're typing another email to the IT department and hoping it gets fixed as soon as possible.

From our calls with the GNC team, we found out they were wasting a lot of time on these tasks. Macro changes took 2-3 days on average because:

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The IT department took time to revert and take action on the query raised. (Since all the communications happened through Email).

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Since the change was to be done in the backend code, the GNC team had no freedom to change macros on their own.

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We figured out the design fixes by mapping out macro dependencies with the dev team, turning that messy and baffling code database into something the GNC team could actually work with.

🤔 What are MACROS?

These check boxes under “Pre-Construction” & “Construction” are MACROS.

MACROS are the checkboxes and fields on a form (in the blue section) that do the math for you.

Once checked, these checkboxes fill in the price numbers for you when you need to guess how much a store build will cost.

To calculate the numbers they use basic project facts - like how big the site is or where it's located (thats done in the backend).

There are 3 kinds of Macros:

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1. The basic ones:

They add a set price into the input field when checked (or remains 0 when not checked).

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1. The calculation types:

They do quick math using project details like size, or the location, or project duration.

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1. The dependent ones:

They team up with other macros and project details to get the whole cost right.

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