Paylocity's new native mobile apps

Summary

In early 2022, I saw a chance to reimagine Paylocity's mobile app by putting the focus on employees. I pitched vision concepts to executives that sparked their interest in a different future for Paylocity products. Working closely with our Chief Product Officer, we shaped these ideas into a business story that became central to Paylocity's market positioning. This led to funding for a new team built to create native mobile apps.

I became the founding member on what grew to a 50-person team. I led design from first concept through MVP launch and beyond, a journey of just over two years.

Vision concepts

For vision work to not be a waste of time, it needs clear purpose and scope. I wanted to help our leadership team move beyond vague talk of being "modern" to seeing more concretely what that actually meant for our users.

My goal was to show a habit-following company that a different future was possible. My prototypes brought this future to life through:

• 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

Our CEO challenged us: ship new mobile apps within a year. While we hoped to build fully native apps, this timeline made that impossible because we lacked time and resources to rebuild every experience. Instead, we crafted a navigation system that blended new native screens with hybrid views from the existing app.

Bringing notifications to mobile

The old app left users missing important updates that were visible in the web experience. We fixed 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.

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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.