Designing software for slow, manual workflows
Most of the systems I build start with a process that already works on paper. The job is to remove the friction without losing the people who run it.
When a workflow has lived on paper for years, the wrong move is to replace the whole process with software on day one. The better move is to keep the muscle memory of the team, map the parts that actually break under load, and ship the smallest dependable piece that gives people time back.
A useful first step is to walk through the workflow with the people who do the work. Note every signature, every duplicate register, every spreadsheet that quietly carries the truth. Then pick one decision that the team has to make repeatedly and ask whether a single form could carry it — even if the data still lives in the same place it always did.
The systems I am proudest of are the ones that nobody had to retrain anyone on. The interface reads like the workflow it replaced, only faster, and the report at the end of the month is the report the team would have written by hand. That is a complete redesign of the boring kind.