Case study / Enterprise workforce operations

From feature parity to an operational system.

Meralis is a fictional identity for a confidential workforce operations product. Over 4+ years as its sole Product Designer, I turned evolving requirements across HR, staffing, payroll and compliance into one connected operational model.

Product Strategy Interaction Design Enterprise UX Design Systems

Meralis Home People Companies Payroll Global IP

Monday, August 11

Good morning, Irene

Operations overview

View payroll

12Open assignments

8Pending approvals

3Payroll batches

Approval queue

View all

Direct Deposit changeReview

Time-off requestPending

Payroll batch #248Approval

Role

Sole Product Designer, responsible for turning stakeholder requirements into product models, workflows, interface decisions, prototypes and implementation guidance.

Product

Bespoke SaaS connecting agency teams, clients and workers across operational workflows with different permissions and responsibilities.

Scope

4+ years, 8 core roles and 30 workflow maps across a product replacing processes previously spread across 3 legacy platforms.

01 / The Challenge

The request was a feature list. The problem was an operating model.

The agency relied on separate HR, payroll and staffing platforms. Stakeholders wanted one internal product that could cover the complete operation, while still feeling familiar enough to replace established tools.

The design thesis was to build the smallest coherent operating system for the agency, not a replica of the software they happened to know.

Context

Complexity came from roles, states and constantly expanding scope.

The product needed to support one worker across multiple active assignments, different truths by role, high-stakes state changes and a scope that could expand indefinitely.

One worker, multiple contexts

Documents, permissions and operational obligations may differ for each assignment.

Different truths by role

HR Admins, representatives, proxies, safety coordinators, clients and workers need different visibility and authority.

High-stakes state changes

Payroll, banking, signatures and eligibility need continuity, traceability and recovery.

Scope could expand indefinitely

Without shared primitives, parity requests would become disconnected screens.

Team + Ownership

A long-running product maintained by a multidisciplinary team.

I worked with 1 Product Manager, 2 Product Owners and 3-4 developers, turning incoming requirements into product decisions.

Team model

1 PM · 2 POs · 1 Designer · 3-4 Developers

Requirements came through stakeholders, the PM and Product Owners, then moved into workflows, prototypes and implementation discussions.

My ownership

From requirements to decisions

I collected requirements, proposed workflows, designed in Figma and validated through prototypes and later interactive HTML prototypes.

02 / The Product

One operational layer across the employee lifecycle.

The differentiator was not any single feature. It was the connection between workforce data, client operations, communication, payroll and compliance.

Workforce

People & assignments

Profiles, placements, eligibility and client context.

Pay

Payroll operations

Batches, tips, overtime, paystubs and approvals.

Operations

Time off & documents

Policies, requests, eSign and compliance records.

Communication

Announcements

Operational updates targeted across the organization.

Configuration

Global settings

WC codes, insurance catalogs, paycodes, tax and policies.

03 / Approach

I made evolving requirements inspectable.

I organized incoming requirements into flows, challenged requests to copy existing products and used prototypes to turn conversations into testable decisions.

8core rolesmodelled across permissions

30workflow mapsacross agency operations

42componentswith states and behavior

149CSS tokenssemantic implementation layer

17DS chaptersguidance, QA and governance

Decision Framework

Create global state and behavior rules instead of fixing each screen independently.

I used a repeatable process: audit symptoms, map actors and units, assess risk and leverage, then encode the decision into states, guardrails, tokens, components and documented behavior.

01 / Audit

Separate symptoms from systems

Distinguish local defects from patterns that repeat across the product.

02 / Map

Define actors and units

Clarify whether an action applies to a person, assignment, client, batch or document.

03 / Assess

Prioritize by risk and leverage

Evaluate behavior fidelity, frequency, operational impact and reuse.

04 / Systemize

Encode the decision

Turn the answer into states, guardrails, tokens, components and documented behavior.

04 / Core System

Payroll was not a feature. It was a product inside the product.

I designed the payroll experience end to end. The hardest part was not the initial launch: it was creating a structure that could absorb requirements discovered through real use.

Launch: establish batch model, employee rows and processing states.
Learn: capture requirements revealed by live payroll operations.
Extend: add pay concepts without rebuilding the IA.
Protect: keep status, totals and ownership visible for HR Admins.

Payroll / Open batches

August 11-17, 2026

2 need approval

3Open batches

184Employees

$286,420Gross payroll

Client / batch	Employees	Pay items	Status	Total
Northstar Retail Madrid / #248	126	Hours / OT / Tips	Pending approval	$192,830
Caldera Foods Valencia / #249	38	Hours / OT	Ready to process	$62,170
Atlas Services Barcelona / #250	20	Salary / Tips	In progress	$31,420

05 / Enterprise Configuration

Global settings connect compliance data to daily operations.

WC Codes classify work across states, while WC Catalogs store insurance carrier and policy metadata. The challenge was making global data reusable without hiding where it applies.

Configuration model

Global Settings → EOR → Company & Sites → Position & Assignment

HR Admins configure reusable records and apply them through the EOR and company structure.

Global Settings

WC Catalogs

Catalog	Carrier	Policy	Effective	Status
North East 2026	Atlas Mutual	WC-8831	Jan 1, 2026	Active
West Coast	Harbor Insurance	WC-2194	Mar 1, 2026	Incomplete

06 / Deep Dive

One employee can represent several legal contexts.

The critical move was separating employee-level identity from assignment-level obligations. “By Group” operates at assignment level; “Everyone” remains employee-level.

Classify the template as employee-aware or assignment-aware.
Constrain the audience so assignment-aware templates cannot use Everyone.
Resolve active matches and exclude people without a matching assignment.
Count employees and generated requests separately.

Send for signature

Assignment-aware

By groupEveryone

Client / NorthstarSite / Madrid

24employees31requests

3 people excluded — no active matching assignment

07 / Deep Dive

Risk should be visible before it becomes an error.

Status, permissions and canonical roles were designed as one operational safety system, not isolated UI controls.

People flags

Guardrail

Signal + enforcement

Jon BellMissing compliance document

Do not use

Ava RuizVerified and available

Ready

Search eligible people...

Jon Bell is not selectable in assignment controls.

Roles

Canonical

One source of truth

Primary

Sophia KimHR Representative

Exactly one

Primary

Marcus LeeSafety Coordinator

Exactly one

Support includes HR Reps and Safety Coordinators, not proxies.

08 / Deep Dive

Automation can assist the decision. It cannot own it.

A reversible Direct Deposit approval flow protects payroll continuity while keeping the human reviewer accountable.

The verified method remains active until approval.
Current and requested data share one decision surface.
A rejection reason reopens the edit/review loop and triggers notification.
AI extraction and match confidence support, but never replace, the reviewer.

Reviewer workspace

Pending review

Current method

Banco Santander

•••• 4832Protected

Requested change

BBVA

•••• 9017Account holder: Maya Chen

AI match signal90%Name + IBAN match

09 / System Delivery

The UI system is becoming a shared delivery mechanism.

The product grew for years without consistent foundations. The recently globalized system is now being implemented to reduce UI drift, repeated decisions and avoidable errors.

Implementation contract

React + TypeScript

styled-components / Vite

color.surface.card  var(--surface-card)
border.subtle       var(--border-subtle)
shadow.card         var(--shadow-card)
space.400           16px
radius.300          12px

Foundations

Semantic tokens

Roles describe intent, so future changes do not rewrite every screen.

Components

Behavior included

Empty, loading, error, disabled, read-only and permission states are specified.

Governance

Change is explicit

Contribution rules and QA checks reduce drift.

Accessibility

Part of done

Contrast, keyboard, focus and responsive behavior are documented.

10 / Outcomes

A broader product, with less operational fragmentation.

The platform continues to evolve after more than four years. Teams increasingly use one product for workflows that previously depended on separate systems.

3legacy platforms consolidatedAcross HR, payroll and staffing operations

~20internal operational usersAcross HR, Payroll and Management

1internal timekeeping integrationClock-in and clock-out data synchronized into the workflow

Verified evidence

Complexity made explicit

8 roles and 30 workflow maps established a shared operating model across assignments, payroll, documents, eSign and compliance.

Qualitative signals

Less operational fragmentation

More workflows are handled inside the same product, teams depend less on separate software and the design system is reducing inconsistency.

Reflection

I would establish shared product documentation before design begins.

The biggest lesson was that a long-running enterprise product needs a documented operating model as much as it needs polished interfaces.

Meralis is a fictional identity. Product details have been anonymized to respect confidentiality.

← Back to selected work Explore more work