The Setup
A mobile-first PWA for a workforce the legacy intranet couldn't reach.
Senior UX on Maven — a cross-platform progressive web app that replaced a non-responsive employee portal with a personalized dashboard, directory, and suite of services employees actually opened on their phones. Shipped during COVID-19, when reaching the workforce stopped being optional.
Got critical communications in front of employees when it mattered most.
When COVID-19 hit, vaccination guidance, office procedures, and safety protocols had to reach the workforce instantly. The legacy desktop portal couldn't. Maven became the channel employees actually checked, on the device they actually carried.
Established the organization's first mobile design system.
Maven didn't just migrate content — it set a new standard. Co-authored with the internal design system team, the mobile components, interaction states, and responsive patterns built for Maven became the baseline for every employee-facing mobile product that followed.
The Landscape
A non-responsive intranet, a workforce going remote.
The legacy employee website wasn't mobile responsive — a flaw the organization had tolerated for years and suddenly couldn't. Engagement was extremely low, which meant critical business services (benefits, directory, internal support) were quietly going unused by the people they existed for.
Then COVID-19 reframed the problem overnight. Communication about vaccination statuses, office procedures, and safety protocols needed to move from nice-to-have to reach every employee, on whatever device they had. The existing portal wasn't going to get there.
Empathy mapping the hybrid employee journey — pain points, needs, and opportunities.
The Mission
Build a mobile-first PWA the workforce would actually open.
Deliver a cross-platform progressive web app that unified directory, classifieds, employee assistance, job satisfaction, and task management into a single personalized dashboard — and do it on top of a mobile design system that didn't yet exist inside the organization. Success meant adoption and engagement, not feature parity.
The Moves
Four bets, ordered by risk.
Co-author a mobile design system from scratch
Worked directly with the internal Design System team to build mobile components, interaction states, and responsive patterns the organization had never formally defined. The hardest piece was adapting the corporate color system to handle multi-layered interaction feedback unique to touch — every button state and every focus ring had to earn its place in a new token set.
A personalized dashboard with a clear information architecture
Maven had to surface six very different services — News, Directory, Classifieds, EAP, Job Satisfaction, Taskmaster — without feeling like a link farm. Tested interaction metaphors against a workforce audience to shape navigation and discovery patterns, then anchored the whole experience in a personalized dashboard tuned for glanceability.
A directory employees would actually use
Rebuilt the employee directory around fast search, tabbed organization (My Team, Recent, Favorites), and one-tap call or email. The legacy version forced employees through a desktop portal nobody wanted to open; the new one lived on their phone and answered the "who do I need to talk to right now?" question in seconds.
Classifieds: a trusted internal marketplace
Classifieds was the sleeper hit — the feature employees described as trading within "a vetted group of safe individuals." Designed a moderated listings flow with categories, photo galleries, location filters, and in-app messaging that gave the community a place to transact without leaving the company walled garden. It ended up being the most beloved section of the app.
The Payoff
70% more engagement, and a design system the org kept using.
Within the first month, Maven hit 20% workforce adoption and drove a 70% increase in news engagement over the legacy portal — exactly when the organization needed critical COVID-19 communications to land. The mobile design system we co-authored for Maven became the organizational standard for every employee-facing mobile product that came after.
Increase in news engagement
Workforce adoption in month one
Design system standard for the org
Looking Back
Meet the workforce where it already is.
The biggest lesson from Maven: employee tools fail when they assume a desk. The legacy portal wasn't unloved because its content was wrong — it was unloved because it lived on the wrong device. Shipping a mobile-first PWA (and the design system underneath it) was less about new features and more about finally showing up on the screen employees already had in their hand.