Project Overview
Air Canada was migrating 15-year-old internal systems to the cloud—an opportunity to unify fragmented HR, corporate, and employee travel services. I led UX research and design to take the portal from 0→1, and collaborated with Team REDx (Reimagined Employee Digital Experience) to make this vision real, starting with an MVP that would prove value quickly while setting the foundation for long-term growth.
Goal: a unified, personalized employee portal that reduces friction and surfaces the most-needed tasks efficiently.
Scope pivot: Mid-project we shifted from “responsive web + app” to a slimmed-down mobile app for MVP. The research, IA, and OKR/KPI framework I led remained the backbone of decisions and allowed us to refocus quickly without losing momentum.
The Challenge
15-year-old legacy system with inconsistent UX and fragmented access.
Multiple portals with overlapping functions, creating confusion and inefficiency.
Poor mobile accessibility for a globally distributed workforce.
Low to non-existent analytics.
Ambiguous starting brief; success metrics undefined.
Aggressive timelines; I was the only designer.
Success looked like: clear information architecture, efficient task completion, higher mobile usage, accessible to retirees, and a measurable feedback loop (OKRs/KPIs).
My Approach
Created the UX strategy and roadmap to align UX efforts with product and business goals.
Co-created OKRs and UX KPIs with PMs/POs to measure design impact.
Integrated AI-assisted tools into my workflow to accelerate research and design processes under aggressive timelines (and as the sole designer).
Focused on highest-impact journeys for MVP; pivoted to mobile-first as priorities shifted.
UX strategy and roadmap of the initiative.
DISCOVERY PHASE
The screenshot shows a key step in identifying user groups and aligning feature priorities. This visual shows stakeholder consensus and guides for research and design decisions throughout the project.
Stakeholder Interviews
We began with an ambiguous vision, so I initiated interviews with key stakeholders to:
Identify common user groups.
Understand their goals, services offered, and operational constraints.
Collaboratively establish criteria for choosing the MVP’s target audience.
Outcome: Defined the MVP personas and assisted to prioritized list of feature needs.
User Research & Workshops
We partnered with stakeholders to recruit employees for:
1:1 interviews to capture user goals, frustrations, and needs.
Workshops to surface content priorities and must-have services.
To meet tight deadlines, I coordinated with other designers who had availability to help run sessions — ensuring richer, faster insights.
Outcome: We listened to employees' input and identified key issues. Examples: problems with searching for policies, confusing navigation, and repeated content that made daily tasks harder.
Whiteboard session dedicated to identifying and classifying the different departments within the company to target for user interviews.
Interview scripts, workshop activities, and tree-testing for research
Using both manual and AI-powered tools for analysis and synthesis provided a comprehensive approach, combining human insight with computational efficiency.
Setting OKRs and UX KPIs
When we got a clearer picture of what we were building, I initiated meetings with the PMs and POs to co-create OKRs and UX KPIs to measure the impact of our redesign.
Analysis & Synthesis
I combined AI-generated summaries with human note-taking to accurately synthesize findings and cluster themes into problem spaces.
This helped translate insights into a user journey, personas, and initial content strategy for MVP.
Information Architecture & Prototyping
Interview findings clarified employee priorities. With this, I created a functioning wireframe prototype focusing on content and widgets. This sparked discussions within the team, enabling decisions about what to keep, remove, or revisit while balancing business and user objectives. Offering a chance for cross-functional collaboration on dashboard and content strategy.
Scope Shift to mo
When leadership prioritized speed to value and on-the-go usage, we narrowed scope to a slim mobile app MVP. Because we had already aligned on personas, top tasks, and success metrics, the pivot was fast and low-risk.
Initiative: Employee portal (0→1)
Timeline: 2025
Role: UX Lead
Tools: Figma, Maze, Tetra Insights, AI-assisted tools
Team: Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Owners, supporting Designers, Engineers, Solutions Architect, and AI team
AI-powered Chatbot
The AI team asked me to collaborate in designing conversational UX for the portal chatbot. I assisted in defining the user experience foundation in:
Default interaction behaviours.
Conversation session management.
Standard response structure.
Fallback and escalation response.
Feedback and continuous improvement.