An app for
business management

It was the fall of 2021. A new team had just formed, and the backend infrastructure serving the entire company was already live. Over 180 companies had been migrated, and 17,500 employees each had their own digital workspace.

That's when I joined. My job was to give all that data a voice and an aesthetic. At the time, HR teams were buried in complex onboarding workflows, and employees struggled to understand their own status and processes. The system worked, but the experience lacked clarity and direction.

As lead designer, my task was to define why this app should exist. How could it reduce complexity for HR, give employees more control, and turn a dense backend into something intuitive? From there, it was about partnering with engineering to bring it to life.

I'm proud of how we handled the complexity. What started as an internal tool evolved into a standalone product that went to market.

Behind every
org chart,
there are people

With 2.2 million customers across 28 countries, Visma is focused on future-proofing businesses at scale.

Through research and questionnaires, we identified several areas that were unnecessarily complex to manage online. These were workflows that needed clarity, structure, and a bit of thoughtful attention.

Together with the tech team, I helped design a new experience that made navigating, managing, and planning corporate tasks simpler and more visual. The goal was to translate operational complexity into an interface that felt structured, intuitive, and scalable across markets.

Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
2023
Platforms
iOS · Android · Web
Responsibilities
Research · UX · UI · IA · Design System

The Problem

Companies invest in systems. Human connection stays fragmented.

VOM already held the data. Over 180 companies and 17,500 employees, each with their own digital workspace. But all that structure was buried in backend complexity, and for the people using it every day, the experience was harder than it needed to be.

  • Discovering who people actually are.
  • Understanding how the organization fits together.
  • Welcoming newcomers into the company.
  • Celebrating the moments that matter.
  • Finding information scattered across multiple systems.

Existing tools focused on structure.
Not on people.

Opportunity

How might we make a growing company feel smaller, and more human?

That question reframed the brief. The job wasn't to expose a database; it was to turn an org of thousands into something an employee could feel part of from day one.

Understanding Employees

The employee journey

Joining the company Meeting people Understanding teams Building relationships Feeling part of the culture Staying engaged

Jobs to be done

When I join a company, I want to quickly understand who people are so I can feel connected sooner.

When I need information about a colleague, I want to find it immediately without navigating multiple tools.

When important moments happen, I want to celebrate them effortlessly.

Principles

Four rules that guided every decision

01

Human before hierarchy

Faces matter more than org charts.

02

Recognition creates engagement

Small moments build culture.

03

Information should be glanceable

Users spend seconds, not minutes.

04

Consistency creates trust

Mobile and desktop should feel like one ecosystem.

User Flows

Three core paths through the product

Discovering a colleague

Home→ Search→ Profile→ Details→ Interaction

Welcoming newcomers

Home→ Newcomers→ Profile→ Send message

Celebrating birthdays

Home→ Birthday card→ Profile→ Congratulate

Exploration

Early wireframes

Before the visual layer, we pressure-tested the fundamentals. Card versus list layouts, how prominent search should be, where information sits in the hierarchy, and how mobile-first the interactions needed to feel.

Early wireframe sketches

The Home Experience

Employees open the app for seconds, not minutes

So the home screen had to answer three questions instantly. Who joined recently? Who's celebrating today? What actually matters right now? Rather than overwhelming people with everything at once, we focused on the moments that bring them back.

Employee view
employee view
Stats
Stats

Rich Profiles

Profiles became more than contact cards

They help employees understand roles, teams, relationships, and the connections they share, so a name turns into a person you can actually place in the organization.

User profile
User profile
Team hierarchy
team hierarchy
Edit user
edit user
Team structure
Team structure
Public user profile
Public user profile

Managing the Organization

Giving HR control without the complexity

Behind the people layer sits the org master: locations, offices, corporate and employee structures. Admins get powerful filters and editing tools, presented so the dense backend never leaks into the experience.

Admin view
Admin view
Filters
Filters
Location view
Location view
Offices
Offices
Corporate structure
Corporate structure
Employee structure
Employee structure
Structure details
Structure details
Filter options
Filter options

Cross-platform

One ecosystem across mobile, tablet, and desktop

The experience had to feel native on every device, staying consistent while playing to each platform's strengths.

Desktop view
Hierarchy
Hierarchy

Design System

A scalable library to support future modules

A shared component library let us stay consistent, move faster, and add new modules without reinventing the basics every time: colors, typography, components, states, and icons.

VOM design system

Key Decisions

Three calls that shaped the product

01

Faces over departments

People remember people, not organizational structures.

02

Less density, more focus

Instead of showing everything, we leaned on progressive disclosure.

03

Designed around habits

Birthdays and newcomers create real reasons to return regularly.

Outcome

From internal backend to a product that went to market

180+ companies migrated onto the platform
17,500 employees with their own workspace
3 platforms unified: iOS, Android, web
  • Employees discover colleagues faster.
  • People stay informed about what matters right now.
  • Social connections across the org grow stronger.
  • A consistent experience holds across every device.
  • What began as an internal tool shipped as a standalone product.

Reflection

Designing VOM taught me that workplace products aren't just productivity tools. They're social systems. The hard part was never really helping users finish tasks. It was helping people feel connected.