Reimagining staffing: from startup agility to enterprise scale

2022 - 2024

Bluecrew was a startup digital staffing platform offering a W-2 employment model, a stark contrast to the industry’s gig-based 1099 approach. In October 2022, Bluecrew was acquired by Employbridge, a major traditional staffing firm, with the goal of modernizing its operations through automation and SaaS efficiencies. My role evolved across two distinct phases—first as the sole designer driving hands-on UX/UI improvements, and later as a UX Director leading a team through a large-scale platform redesign.

Hands-On Design & Early Impact

For the first eight months, I was the only designer on the workplace product team, executing all design work for the client-facing web platform. Soon after, the designer on the worker side left, and I absorbed hands-on design responsibilities for the worker mobile app as well, a role I held for six additional months while continuing my work on the workplace website.

During this period, I focused on usability improvements driven by data (Google Analytics, Pendo) and direct user research. I conducted client calls and leveraged insights from the Account Management team to identify major UX pain points.

One major hands-on achievement was the Timesheets Redesign—a feature that was initially built without design input and limited to internal use. I transformed it into a fully customer-facing experience, aligning it with our Blueprint Design System and launching a beta in late 2023. Early data showed high adoption and a 25% reduction in Account Manager time spent resolving timesheet issues.

Another key project was optimizing the "Post a Job" workflow, which suffered from redundant Position & Schedule creation due to poor visibility of existing selections. Through rapid user testing and a Lightning Swarm sprint, I led quick UX fixes that reduced time-on-task by 17% and cut down duplicate entries.

Design System Contributions

From day one, I noticed that the existing Blueprint Design System was underutilized. Many components were being manually recreated in individual files instead of leveraging the system properly. I collaborated with the other designer to relink components, enforce consistency, and drive adoption.

Beyond just promoting usage, I actively worked on improving the system itself. I dedicated time each week to:

  • Organizing & maintaining components

  • Adding necessary variants for flexibility

  • Ensuring new elements were properly documented and incorporated

Once my team was in place, I appointed one of my designers as the Design System Shepherd, ensuring continued improvements and documentation updates.

Leading the Large-Scale Platform Redesign

As our team grew, I transitioned from hands-on execution into leading a full re-architecture of the platform, focusing on information architecture (IA), extensibility, and dashboard UX. We built a prototype of a limited-scope redesign while aligning our work with the company’s new backend framework, balancing bold improvements with continuity for existing users.

Our redesigned platform introduced:

  • A new IA & navigation system optimized for scalability

  • A proper dashboard that structured daily action items with "Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow" visibility

  • A phased redesign approach, ensuring stability while avoiding major disruptions to user workflows

Unfortunately, corporate shifts in 2024 resulted in major layoffs, and I was unable to see the full vision through to launch. However, I take pride in the impact of my work — both in driving meaningful UX improvements and establishing a stronger design foundation for the future.

A quick prototype showcasing the redesigned UI with consistent layout, UI patterns and a more app-like navigation.

 

We performed a complete content audit to analyze global functionality across pages which lead to our new IA & consistent headers cross the experience.

 

Part of our proposal was a unified AI assistant that could provide support, create Job Requests with recommendations from our data and help you communicate with your workforce. Internally at Employbridge, they love their “bridge” puns, so I gave it a name I thought would go over well.

 

Our new Dashboard design provided snapshots of activity with actionable information. Right from the dashboard you could approve the previous days shifts, communicate with your workforce and fill upcoming jobs.

 

A sizzle reel to sell some projects through the board and the executive team. The screens shown in the video are the old design.