CES People Portal
& Time Tracking

CES employees previously depended on a third-party business application for everyday needs such as leave requests, personal documents, company policies, healthcare and insurance information, and other HR services. The required data came from different tables, and employees often had to follow separate links for related tasks.

The result was a fragmented experience that was difficult for employees to navigate and difficult for managers and operational teams to maintain. I initiated the redesign as a dedicated CES People Portal: a unified, role-based platform combining employee self-service with time tracking, approvals, operational workflows, learning, calendars, and performance visibility.

CES already had employee data, existing processes, and working content. The challenge was that these elements were distributed across legacy tables, external links, and department-specific workflows. Employees had to remember where to go, while managers lacked one clear place to review requests, monitor time, and take action.

The redesign did not remove the organisation’s existing knowledge or processes. It reorganised them around employee and manager needs, replacing system-oriented navigation with a task-oriented experience.

As Product Designer and UX Architect, I initiated the redesign, defined the product structure, and designed the interactive experience across desktop and mobile. I translated existing business processes into module-level architecture, then broke each module into tasks, forms, permissions, approvals, and reusable interaction patterns.

I also supported implementation and phased release, working with stakeholders to identify broken functionality, validate department-specific needs, and refine the portal as adoption expanded across departments and client-aligned employee groups.

The work was completed over six months by a three-person design team. I owned the product architecture, task flows, interaction model, design direction, and design system. Responsibilities were divided so the team could progress in parallel while maintaining one consistent product vision.

For every new component, flow modification, and design-system decision, I explained the business scenario to product managers and developers. I gathered their operational and technical feedback, adjusted the flow where it improved the experience or implementation, and conducted a final flow walkthrough with developers before handover. This created shared understanding before development started and reduced ambiguity during implementation.

Double Diamond suited this project because the organisation already had data, content, and established workflows. We did not need to invent an HR process from nothing. We needed to understand the current ecosystem broadly, define the right internal portal problem, explore how the processes could be reorganised, and then deliver a coherent system that could improve through phased releases.

The key architectural decision was to stop exposing the structure of the old system to users. Instead, I grouped information into recognisable modules and designed each module around the task a person needed to complete. Role-based access ensured employees, managers, HR, procurement, billing, and compliance teams saw the actions and information relevant to them.

Leave approval became a reference flow for the wider portal because it connects employee self-service, policy rules, manager decisions, status communication, and HR records. The redesigned journey keeps ownership and next steps visible at every stage.

We conducted usability testing with selected departments and reviewed the implemented product for broken functionality, unclear interactions, and missing paths. Findings were prioritised by task importance and operational impact, then translated into flow, content, and interface updates.

This was not a single release. The portal was introduced gradually across departments and client-aligned employee groups. Each phase gave us evidence to refine the next, allowing the system to become more stable and complete over time.

The portal was introduced as a sequence of connected capabilities rather than one high-risk launch. The sequence below reflects the product logic used to establish foundations first, then expand into management and operational workflows.

An early direction considered placing most employee services and management information on one dashboard. That would have made every capability immediately visible, but it also reproduced the complexity we were trying to remove.

I chose a task-based home experience with role-specific shortcuts, pending actions, and progressive disclosure. Employees see personal services and status; managers see team work and approvals; operational users enter their department modules. This reduced visual competition while preserving fast access to frequent tasks.

The final interface translates the portal architecture into responsive mobile and desktop experiences. A dark-navy CES visual language, clear status patterns, reusable cards, structured forms, and role-aware dashboards create consistency across employee self-service and management workflows.

I created the design system to keep a growing enterprise portal coherent as new modules and department workflows were introduced. Foundations covered colour, typography, spacing, form behaviour, feedback, and status communication; reusable components covered navigation, cards, tables, filters, approvals, calendars, alerts, and responsive states.

This project reinforced that enterprise UX architecture is not simply arranging screens. It connects data, tasks, permissions, departments, and decisions into a system people can understand. The strongest simplification came from organising the portal around employee and manager tasks—not around the fragmented structure inherited from the legacy application.

Working in a three-person team also strengthened my ability to set direction while enabling parallel delivery. I owned the architecture, core flows, interaction design, and system coherence; the team contributed icon design and usability activity within that shared framework. Implementation reviews and department feedback became design inputs, helping us correct broken paths and improve the portal phase by phase.