Leave Blueprint — Maternity Leave Planner
Self-service maternity leave planning before HR.
Coverage timeline — protected time, paid time, and partial pay in one view.
I designed a self-service planning tool for one of the most stressful moments in workforce software. It helped employees understand timing, pay, and coverage before filing with HR.
Challenge
The hardest part came before the request.
There was no self-service tool for the planning stage. Employees had to piece together leave details on their own — reading policy language, estimating dates, and calling HR for help. The work was time-consuming, stressful, and easy to get wrong.
What I created
I designed a self-service planning tool that helped employees understand leave before filing with HR. The product turned fragmented policy, timing, and pay information into one structured planning flow.
Research proof
Step 1
Start with the person, not the policy
I designed the flow to begin with the employee's own situation. Instead of asking people to decode policy first, the tool gathered the personal inputs — location, tenure, and company benefits — needed to build a useful leave plan.
Personal context first — desktop and mobile.
Step 2
Make time visible
Leave planning is hard when dates stay abstract. I designed the planner to map time away on a calendar, so employees could see duration, timing, and overlap more clearly.
A calendar turns leave into something people can see, adjust, and plan around.
Step 3
Show pay, coverage, and time together
Employees needed more than a date range. They needed to understand what would be paid, what would be protected, and how different leave types worked together. I designed the blueprint view to bring those pieces into one place.
Pay, coverage, and time in one view — at every screen size.
End state
End with clear next steps
The experience ended with a clear summary of leave, coverage, and next steps. It gave employees a finished view of their plan before they moved forward with HR.
The complete plan, confirmed.
My role
I led product design across strategy, research, and structure. I defined the planning model, shaped the step-by-step flow, and designed the timeline and summary views that made leave easier to understand.
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