End-to-end UX design for an AI-powered HR SaaS platform — sole designer from research and strategy through to a production-ready design system and shipped interfaces.
AskFritz is a B2B SaaS platform that helps companies onboard, manage, and query employee knowledge using AI. I joined as the sole designer — no existing design language, no component library, no prior UX work to build on.
The platform serves two distinct user types: HR admins who manage the company side, and employees who interact with their personal dashboards and work queues. Designing for both paths simultaneously required a clear systems-thinking approach from day one.
I owned everything: research, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, and the Figma design system — working directly with the founding engineering team in an agile environment.
HR platforms are notoriously hard to use. AskFritz had the additional complexity of two completely separate user journeys — company admins and employees — sharing the same entry point. The original flow had 8 steps to reach a core task, and users consistently dropped off before completing key actions.
Research with 15 participants revealed the core issue: users couldn't predict where their task lived in the navigation. Card sorting showed a fundamentally different mental model from what the existing IA reflected.
The core design decision was to split the two user journeys clearly at the point of sign-up — a toggle between "For Companies" and "For Employees" — so each user type only ever sees their own interface. This reduced cognitive load immediately.
Navigation was restructured from 8 steps to 5, based directly on the card sorting results. Primary tasks moved to the top level; secondary actions were grouped into contextual sub-menus. Every structural decision was validated with users before implementation.
The AI query interface — the product's core differentiator — was elevated to a primary nav item with a clear, guided flow: describe your requirement, set a match threshold, get recommendations.
I built a full Figma design system from scratch — tokens for colour, typography, spacing, and shadow; 50+ components with auto-layout and documented usage guidelines; WCAG 2.1 AA compliance throughout.
The system reduced design-to-development iteration cycles by 25%. Engineers had a single source of truth for every component, and new screens could be assembled from existing parts rather than built from scratch each time.
The design system was the multiplier — every hour invested in it saved three in handoff, QA, and rework.
Every metric came from a deliberate research decision — card sorting, tree testing, and usability sessions run before a single interface was finalised. The outcomes reflect the process, not luck.