onboar[d]

onboar[d]
Login screen for both HR and new employees
HR dashboard on desktop showing overall onboarding progress
Employee dashboard on desktop showing individual onboarding progress
Employee dashboard on mobile showing individual onboarding progress

Inspiration

Starting something new is something nearly all of us experience. Whether that is for jobs or internships, every initial step is onboarding. However, onboarding is often confusing and fragmented, spread across emails and unfamiliar documents. From our own experiences and survey research, we saw how common it is for people to feel unsure about what to do first and to rely on HR for clarification. We wanted to reimagine onboarding as something clear and confidence-building rather than overwhelming.

What it does

onboar[d] is a personal onboarding assistant that transforms scattered onboarding tasks into a guided experience. New hires get a centralized dashboard with step-by-step tasks, deadlines, and progress tracking, so they always know what to do next.

At the same time, HR teams have a real-time view of each new hire’s progress. They can easily track missing forms from new hires, assign tasks, and ensure everything is completed accurately and on time.

How we built it

We designed onboar[d] as a dual-interface system.

A mobile/web interface for new hires focused on daily tasks, document uploads, and guided workflows, and a dashboard for HR/admins to track progress, manage requirements, and monitor completion.

Challenges we ran into

During the two work days, we ran into challenges with scoping. While we had many ideas for what the application could include for both HR and employee sides and for all possible use cases, we had to turn our focus to the main functionality of our application, and limit what we included for both desktop and mobile screens.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of being able to design and build out both a mobile and web interface for two different user types in less than two days. On top of that, we tackled a complex dual-user problem and turned it into a clear, intuitive experience for both HR managers and new hires.

What we learned

Working on onboar[d] showed us how important it is to design for two very different users at the same time. Balancing what HR managers need (visibility, control, and quick action) with what new hires need (clarity, reassurance, and a sense of direction) was harder than we expected and pushed us to be more intentional about every design decision we made.

We also learned that slowing down early actually saved us time later. Planning out ideas in Notability and using Gemini to guide our research helped us stay focused on the real problem before jumping into Figma. If we had more time, we would find HR managers to conduct usability testing, validate our design decisions, and explore how we could expand the mobile experience and use AI to further personalize the onboarding journey for each new hire.

What's next for onboar[d]

Moving forward, we want to continue polishing the existing features and build on what we have, starting with the mobile view. We also see a lot of potential in integrating AI to personalize each hire's journey as well as provide deeper insights for HR managers.