Designing a shared experience layer that connected disconnected contractor services, reduced support dependency, and established the foundation for a scalable platform ecosystem.
Overview
ProSector provides accountancy, tax, payroll, and contractor management services to self-employed professionals across multiple industries.
Over time, these services evolved independently, resulting in separate products, onboarding processes, and operational workflows. While each service addressed a specific business need, contractors experienced them as disconnected systems that required repeated onboarding, multiple URLs, and frequent support from account managers.
I helped design ProSector Launchpad, a unified entry point that connected five contractor services through a shared identity, onboarding, navigation, and document management experience. Beyond improving usability, the project established foundational UX principles and interaction patterns that became the basis for future products across the ecosystem.
My Role
UX Designer
Over 6–7 months, I collaborated with design leadership, customer experience teams, account managers, and engineering teams to:
Lead stakeholder discovery and workflow mapping
Redesign onboarding architecture across services
Define navigation and information architecture
Establish reusable UX patterns and platform principles
Design responsive experiences across web and mobile
Support implementation, testing, and iteration
The Challenge
ProSector's contractor ecosystem had grown organically over time.
Multiple services had been built independently at different stages of the company's growth, each with its own workflows, onboarding process, navigation patterns, and operational teams.
For contractors, this created a fragmented experience:
Separate URLs and product experiences
Repeated onboarding across services
Limited visibility into available services
Inconsistent interaction patterns
Heavy reliance on support teams for routine tasks
The fragmentation affected internal teams as well.
Service teams often relied on manual coordination and email communication to transfer information between products, creating inefficiencies and reducing visibility across the customer journey.
Above: Ecosystem Before redesign
Above: Ecosystem After redesign
Research & Discovery
To understand the ecosystem beyond individual products, I conducted stakeholder interviews with:
Board leadership
Client relationship teams
Customer experience specialists
Lead account managers
A recurring pattern emerged.
Contractors frequently contacted support teams for tasks that should have been self-service. At first glance, this appeared to be a usability issue.
However, deeper conversations revealed a different problem.
Users were comfortable with industry terminology and complex financial processes.
What they lacked was:
Continuity across services
Visibility into their status and progress
Confidence navigating workflows independently
Clear understanding of what to do next
Defining the Opportunity
The goal was not to redesign five separate products.
The goal was to create continuity across them.
We reframed the challenge as:
How might we create a shared operational layer that helps contractors navigate complex services independently while reducing reliance on human support?
To achieve this, we focused on four strategic objectives:
Create a Unified Entry Point
Provide a single destination where contractors could access all services, documents, and account information.
Reduce Repetition
Eliminate unnecessary onboarding duplication and reuse information wherever possible across services.
Increase Service Visibility
Help users understand what services were available, which were active, and what actions required attention.
Establish Platform Standards
Create reusable interaction patterns that future products could adopt as the ecosystem continued to grow.
Designing the Launchpad
Rather than acting as a traditional dashboard, Launchpad became the operational home for the entire contractor ecosystem.
It served as:
A shared identity layer
A navigation layer across services
A centralized document repository
A status and notification hub
A foundation for future service expansion
For many users, this became the most frequently visited page across the ecosystem.
The experience brought together previously disconnected workflows while maintaining a consistent mental model regardless of which service users accessed.
Reframing Onboarding
Onboarding represented a critical first interaction between contractors and ProSector.
Historically, onboarding requirements varied across services, creating duplicated effort and confusion.
We redesigned onboarding around contractor context rather than product boundaries.
Always Show Status
Users should understand where they are, what has been completed, and what requires attention.
Never Ask for Repeated Information
Data should follow users across services whenever possible.
Break Complex Workflows into Stages
Large processes become manageable when presented as clear, sequential steps.
Progressive Disclosure for Compliance
Complex legal and regulatory requirements should be introduced when relevant, rather than all at once.
Consistent Navigation and Interaction Patterns
Users should not have to relearn how the ecosystem works when moving between services.
These principles later informed future redesign efforts across the ProSector platform.
Establishing a Shared Experience Layer
The Launchpad wasn't designed as another product within the ProSector ecosystem—it became the experience layer that connected them.
While each service continued to solve a different business problem, they now shared a common foundation for onboarding, identity, navigation, and account management. Contractors no longer had to relearn how the ecosystem worked every time they adopted a new service.
Rather than designing individual screens, we established reusable interaction principles that could scale across current and future products.
Platform Principles
These principles became the foundation for future product work across the ecosystem.
Building Confidence Through Workflow Clarity
One recurring issue involved compliance-related document submissions.
For example, contractors were required to download forms, complete them outside the platform, and upload signed versions back into the system.
Early versions of the experience placed multiple actions and instructions on a single screen.
Testing revealed that users were not confused by the process itself—they were unsure about system state:
Had the download completed?
What should happen next?
Was the uploaded document accepted?
Was additional action required?
We redesigned these flows around clear stages, explicit feedback, and next-step guidance, helping users complete compliance workflows with greater confidence.
Above: B10 form upload flow updated design after usability testing
Above: B10 form upload flow Initial design
Tutorials for Different Age Groups
Our user base (35–60) required a balance of guidance and speed.
We added step-by-step tutorials for new or older users while keeping flows light for experienced ones.
Mobile App Designs
The mobile version extends the same logic with a “More” menu that houses Profile, Documents, and Knowledge Center.
Outcomes
User Impact
Reduced onboarding friction across services
Increased confidence navigating workflows independently
Improved visibility into available services and account status
Reduced reliance on support teams for routine actions
Increased adoption of self-service behaviors
Business Impact
25% reduction in onboarding drop-offs
20% reduction in support calls
Improved cross-service discovery and adoption
Better visibility across the customer lifecycle
Operational Impact
Unified user and document repository across services
Reduced manual coordination between service teams
Shared customer visibility across departments
Foundation established for future service integration
Reflection
This project changed how I think about platform design.
The core challenge was not simplifying contractor workflows. Those workflows were inherently complex and often tied to financial, legal, and compliance requirements.
The real challenge was creating continuity across services that had evolved independently over time.
By introducing shared onboarding, navigation, status visibility, and interaction patterns, we helped users build confidence navigating the ecosystem independently while creating a scalable foundation for future products.
The most valuable lesson was that users don't always need simpler workflows.
They need continuity, visibility, and confidence to navigate complex ones successfully.
