Doudou EOR Onboarding System
Role
Product Designer Lead
Project Type
Freelance project
What I Did
Led UX design and client collaboration, translated manual workflows into digital flows
Team
Project Manager
Product Designer (Me)
Developer
Overview
Translating Unstructured B2B Workflows into Scalable Product UI
I led UX design for an onboarding system built for a global EOR (Employer of Record) provider. The client, who had never worked with a product team before, previously managed onboarding via spreadsheets, email chains, and PDF attachments.
This project aimed to turn a fragmented, human-reliant workflow into a scalable digital platform.
ChallengE
Designing Without a PM or Formal Requirements
*image blurred for privacy reasons
This project operated without a product manager or centralized requirements. I was responsible for shaping the product direction from scattered operational documents and stakeholder conversations.
The client had business rules and data fields documented across fragmented spreadsheets, but no clear user journey or ownership mapping. I translated these artifacts into key screens and used them to facilitate weekly working sessions—validating assumptions, clarifying responsibilities, and prompting the client to articulate edge cases. This helped extract process logic and define stakeholder roles.
Process
Streamlining the collaborative design process
At first, I made the mistake of showing clients full working files with too many variations and repeated content. This confused them and slowed alignment. I quickly pivoted to presenting a step-by-step user flow format, visually mapping what happens in each phase and who is responsible.
To support more informed discussions, I also conducted competitive audits of platforms like Multiplier and Globalization Partners (G-P). These helped ground my design decisions and provided real-world examples to align expectations with the client—especially useful when discussing form structure, field grouping, and progressive disclosure.
I further improved collaboration by training clients to use Figma comments, which dramatically increased clarity, reduced meeting hours, and enabled asynchronous feedback loops across time zones.
process mapping
Unstructured Workflows → Modular UI Flows
Onboarding often involved 4 actors (Client, Candidate, Partner, Internal), each responsible for submitting different sets of documents. The handoffs were vague and prone to error.
I restructured the onboarding experience into:
Clear status-driven case tracking
Tabbed layout by responsibility: Job Info, Candidate Info, Offer Letter
Inline guidance and grouped fields to reduce decision paralysis
Iteration
Evolving from Linear to Layered: Reorganizing Information for Better Experience
One of the most difficult parts of this project was deciding how to group complex information and what to show at each step. The onboarding process involved multiple parties contributing different types of information—job details, salary, candidate profile, offer letter—and all of it needed to be clear, structured, and reviewable in context.
In early versions, I used an accordion layout to stack these sections vertically. But as real data came in, it became clear that this approach made the page too long and difficult to scan. Users had to scroll extensively, lost their place easily, and struggled to understand which section belonged to whom.
After reviewing competitor platforms and testing the flow internally, I restructured the layout using:
Tabbed navigation for high-level grouping by role/task (e.g. Job Info, Candidate Info, Offer Letter)
Cards and two-column layouts within each tab for clear visual hierarchy and chunking
This not only improved scanability and user orientation, but also created a structure that scales better as the system grows (e.g., adding more roles or fields in the future).
outcome
Facilitating the Onboarding Process with Clarity and Structure
This project resulted in tangible outcomes across product design, stakeholder collaboration, and implementation readiness:
Created a scalable, logic-based UI from a messy offline workflow
Enabled collaboration between design and a non-product-savvy client
Delivered a high-fidelity prototype now in development, used as the foundation for engineering handoff
What I Learned
Leading UX in Ambiguity Requires Both Design and Facilitation
This project taught me how to operate without assumptions. I learned how to guide non-technical clients through a UX process using visuals, not jargon. I also improved my approach to presenting work—moving from messy working files to curated flows that support conversation and clarity.
By benchmarking competitors and adapting my collaboration tools (like Figma comments), I learned to create not just better designs, but better understanding between teams with vastly different expectations.