Humi started as a better way for bootstrap startups to store employee data. It wasn't where you paid them, or covered them — those lived elsewhere, through disconnected systems.
One system for the work behind work.
I spent a year and a half at Humi, joining as a design intern and staying on as its first Product Designer, leading a redesign of the entire product
2018 – 2019 · Team of 30
I designed a new Humi from the ground up. Helping position it as the go-to platform for HR, payroll, and benefits in Canada.
Problem
Over time, the platform became unclear and complex. The experience was riddled with fragmented controls and inconsistent patterns, and built on debt.
The UI was dated, and couldn't scale. Non-tech-savvy users and those with accessibility needs struggled to use Humi.
A barrier to growth. The IA and design system could not support the flexibility needed to support the whole employee lifecycle.
Discovery
I partnered with the PM to interview HR admins. A survey I helped design drew 130 responses, shaping our early hypotheses and who we recruited for formative and evaluative interviews.
We found that small HR teams were managing a surprisingly broad workload. Onboarding, payroll, benefits, and performance ran through a fragmented ecosystem of siloed tools and manual processes admins had to bridge by hand.
Solution
I redesigned payroll runs around a 10-minute workflow, bringing calculations, tax obligations, filings and direct deposits into one place.
Onboarding was painful for everyone. So we built a flexible importer that could handle whatever shape an admin's data came in, while cutting down the time employees spent on all the boring HR stuff.
We made time off easier to plan. Before submitting, users now see exactly how much time they'd have left and who else was already away, without checking calendars or asking around.
I anchored all of it to a single employee record. When payroll, compliance, benefits, and HR all draw from the same source of truth, your data stays consistent without anyone having to manually sync it.
Impact
The redesign shipped to all customers. Humi grew from 1,400 to over 4,000 businesses across Canada, and half of monthly active employees used the platform every day. V2 helped Humi move beyond 10-person startups and serve businesses with 50 to 200 employees.
The company went on to raise $46M across its Series A and B and was acquired by Employment Hero.
When I joined AnyDay years later, my onboarding brought me back to Humi. The familiar screens reminded me how much I’d cared about getting them right. It felt good to see them still in use, now helping me settle into a new job.
Every screen I designed, framed by my PM to celebrate launch.