atwork (formerly Volunty)
UX/UI Designer (80%)
UX Research, Design Systems, Feature Design
Timeline: 3 years 2 months (Dec 2018 – Jan 2022)
Team: Product & Engineering, Zürich
Visit site: atwork.ai

Leading design for a growing B2B SaaS platform, from early-stage startup through a CHF 3.25M seed round.


I joined atwork (then Volunty) as the design lead for their employee engagement platform, working closely with product managers and engineers within an agile framework. Over three years, my role grew from shaping individual features to owning the design system that held the whole product together.

Early on, the priority was structure: translating ideas, user feedback, and business requirements into wireframes and user flows the team could build from. As the product matured, I conceptualised and documented user personas that shaped how the whole team thought about who we were designing for, and led the migration of our entire design workflow from Adobe XD to Figma, restructuring how the team collaborated day to day.

The biggest long-term contribution was the design system itself: a set of principles and components built to scale with the product's growth, still guiding its UI evolution after I moved on. Alongside product work, I contributed visual design to investor presentations and supported marketing with website copy and layout.

My Role & Process
  • Feature Design: Took ideas from product/engineering through wireframes and user flows to development handoff
  • Research & Personas: Conceptualised and documented user personas used across the product team
  • Design Systems: Built and maintained a scalable design system defining the platform's UI principles
  • Team Leadership: Led the design team's agile workflow and migrated the team from Adobe XD to Figma
What I Learned
  • Designing at Scale: Building a design system taught me to think in principles, not just screens, so the product could grow without losing coherence
  • Cross-Functional Ownership: Working closely with product and engineering meant learning to translate business strategy into design decisions, and back again
  • Leading Under Growth: Supporting a team through a seed round meant adapting fast, from feature work to investor-facing materials, often in the same week


Note: screens from this period are under NDA.

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