Paylocity’s new native mobile apps

Summary

In early 2022, I saw a chance to reimagine Paylocity’s mobile app by refocusing them around employee use cases. I pitched vision concepts to executives, which generated enthusiasm around what a differentiated mobile experience would look like. I then partnered with our CPO to shape the ideas into a business story that became central to Paylocity’s market positioning. This led to funding for a new project team formed specifically for the mobile app project.

I was the first member of what grew to be a 50-person team, and led design through the MVP launch and beyond.

Vision concepts

Vision work needs clear purpose and scope. In this case, the purpose was to help our leadership team move beyond vague talk about being modern to a more concrete picture of what that word meant for our company.

I built prototypes that attempted to show a different possible future. The prototypes showed:

• Clean, focused interfaces that put user tasks first
• A shift from product-centered to user-centered thinking
• Modern mobile patterns that felt at home on iOS and Android

Deadlines created useful constraints

Once the project got the green light, our CEO challenged us to ship a new mobile app within a year. This timeline made it impossible to delivery fully native apps like we’d hoped. It became a question of identifying new experiences to add and tying them together with existing experiences so that the experience was seamless.

Bringing notifications to mobile

The old app left users without important updates that were available in the web experience. We addresssed this by designing a notification center that brought time-sensitive alerts to the mobile app, making it harder to miss deadlines or requests.

Portable to-dos

We built a task management hub where employees can track and complete assigned work. This feature existed on web but was missing from mobile, sometimes resulting in a misleading picture of what needed to be done. Bringing this feature to mobile made these tasks portable and actionable from anywhere.

Basing the new design system on the product work

I created and maintained our mobile design system throughout the project. This included building all Figma components and writing clear guidelines. The system had to support both native and hybrid patterns while maintaining consistency between them—no small task.

Educating designers and stakeholders

When the mobile app released, I gave presentations to product managers and designers about our mobile strategy, and gave advice about how to approach designing mobile features.

Results and lessons learned

The new mobile apps launched on time and changed how Paylocity’s customers thought about our mobile offering. They’re the highest-rated mobile apps in the enterprise HCM category.

The biggest lesson I took from this project was the power of visual storytelling in organizational change. My initial concepts didn’t just sell an app; they sold a new way of thinking about our products.