I was invited to join Proofed after successfully completing a rebranding project while working at Uniforma. At this point, we had established a clean, modular design system. It supported the entire website while allowing for significant feature growth in the MVP and beyond.
The decision to change stemmed from the company's digital workplace culture and a desire to scale. Proofed is the world's leading editorial support for business teams globally, combining human expertise with technology. And being a US Top 50 Inspiring Workplace, it was crystal clear that internal systems should be as exceptional as the people who power them.
Eighty-two percent of employees with modern technology and engaged IT staff express the intent to stay in their workplace, compared to 58% without*
Source: Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Digital Workplace Applications, 2023
We believed that investing in superior internal systems is a strategic decision that empowers and retains a committed workforce and drives organizational success.
Proofed uses their collaborative process to deliver orders. We decided to mirror it and create a structure suitable for every type of user, from editors and reviewers to admins and customers. We gave our users three areas – Creative Panel, backed by Customer and Admin Areas.
Leading the user experience with streamlined processes in mind was crucial to me. Fortunately, our users are our employees, providing an ideal situation for research and testing. The aim was to simplify their time-consuming tasks, such as onboarding team members, creating and managing batches of orders, automated payments, and handling complex workflows – which were particularly challenging given that we hire editors worldwide and need to coordinate tasks 24/7.
Whereas that is happening in the background, we ensured the other group of users could efficiently process thousands of written words daily. Their dedicated Creative Panel not only simplifies the process of taking on work but also enables editors to track progress, history, pay, and feedback for continuous improvement.
In 2024, we implemented a process grounded in my UX research, which fundamentally changed how we approached requirement creation.
I am proud of how we achieved a balance, transitioning from a business-driven approach to a near 50/50 split, where user needs are equally valued for their business impact. This shift allowed us to move from an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to an MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) approach, creating a product that our users actually enjoy using while making their work smoother.
It's important to remember that as digital employees, our users spend the majority of their day working within our systems and processing orders. Involving them in shaping requirements was a significant win, highlighted later in our annual People Report.
We ensured that the technical side of things could support the platform we had envisioned. We had to effectively manage the work of two tech teams operating in different time zones. Our internal US backend team developed a completely new API, while the front-end was handled by a Polish team from Pagepro. There was much to learn in terms of documentation building and work management, which was at times painful, but we learnt a lot and managed to solve any issues with Agile at heart.
Every designer must have heard rumors about startup-like culture, and as a solo designer on the team, I can confirm and deny all of them. It's true that there's a lot of work, but it afforded me the autonomy to make my own decisions and create a genuine impact.