Summary
My Role
Experience Strategist & Design Lead
Cross-Functional Team
1 Product Lead, 2 Principal Architects, 4 Engineers, 1 Automation Engineer, 2 QAs
Target Users
- HR Professional of Contingent Program (Staffing Specialist & Program Specialist)
- Finance Professional involved in Contingent Program (Hiring Manager & Program Specialist)
- Configurator for VMS (System Admin, Solution Architect, Functional Consultant)
Problem
Proving how a calculation engine gets to its numbers is crucial to build the trust needed for product adoption. The challenge was to translate these complex logics, driven by various rule settings and security layers across NA, EMEA, and APAC, into a simple, user-friendly format. My goal was to create a consistent Explainability pattern to clarify the math and reasonings behind every calculation, envisioned to deliver an assistive, insightful experience that helps users forecast budgets and make more equitable hiring decisions.
Business Impacts
- Unlocked EMEA market valued at €5,000M: Provided greater transparency and removed specific feature restrictions through a well-thought-through experience strategy, enabling the expansion;
- Accelerated product development by 2 months: Streamlined the FY27 Roadmap by identifying critical decision points; provided the Product team with greater certainty to move through ambiguity and deliver ahead of schedule.
- Pioneered a high-trust partnership with engineering: Transformed a skeptical culture into a shared-ownership model, ensuring technical considerations baked into the vision early. Created a seamless handoff process that saved enough capacity to ship lovable features beyond the initial MVP scope.
- Elevated organizational design maturity: Inspired the Senior Director to adopt evidence-based, context-driven decision-making, raising the standard for design craft and objectivity across the broader Workday Design org.
Kudos from The Team
Emi has been a great collaborator and an amazing teammate for all the right reasons! It's been eye opening for me to see how a great partnership between UX and Product impacts the project. I wanted to say, a big BIG thank you for being such an amazing partner in crime throughout this whole journey of finding the best solution for our German & EMEA-based Customers.
(Product Lead)
Emi is very quick to absorb all the information from the different stakeholders and proposed multiple design flows for rather complex parts of the application. Her options comes along with a thoughtful analysis of the pros and cons, while remaining consistently open to feedback or pivoting the approach entirely. It was one of the most engaging and collaborative projects I have been a part of in 2025.
(Principal Architect)
She's been with the team for a short time (3 months) but heavily involved in [a new global project] along with the enhancements to expanding the [new features] in Calc Engine. I really appreciate her attention to details and the way she explains her thinking process. She's also great about taking feedback from the team to update her design directions.
(Engineering Manager)
More Details Coming Soon!