Designing for people in crisis, inside a system built for policy.
CASE STUDY – EI APPLICATION MODERNIZATION
CLIENT
Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
TYPE
Mobile-first, Web Responsive
DURATION
Ongoing (Year 2)
TOOLS
Figma, Miro, Mural, Azure DevOps
ROLE
Senior Product Designer — IC across multiple pods
TEAM
Cross-functional — designers, BAs, content, product, SMEs, developers
OVERVIEW
A national program. Real stakes. No room for ambiguity.
ESDC's Employment Insurance application serves Canadians during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives — job loss, illness, caregiving. The existing experience was dense, jargon-heavy, and built around policy logic rather than human behaviour. High drop-off rates and error-driven rejections weren't just a content problem. They were a structural one.
I've been embedded as an IC designer across the EI modernization program for over two years (working across multiple pods), moving from hands-on flow design to systems thinking to, most recently, program-level planning alongside leadership.
THE PROBLEM
Users weren't failing because the policy was hard. They were failing because the experience gave them no tools to succeed.
The application dumped critical information all at once, with no indication of what mattered now versus later. There was no progress visibility, no preparation, and no way to catch errors before submission. Users were making high-stakes decisions (tax elections, income declarations), without context or guidance. The question wasn't how to simplify a complex system. It was how to design structure that builds confidence, without touching policy or legacy constraints.
THE WORK
Four interconnected pieces and why each one mattered.
01
UX audit and heuristic evaluation
Before designing anything, I mapped the end-to-end application to find recurring patterns of confusion versus individual screens. This shifted the work from fixing UI to fixing structure.
02
Application homepage and wayfinding
A central hub that gave users a clear entry point, visible section status, and a realistic time expectation upfront. If users knew where they were and what was coming, early drop-off would drop. User testing validated this. Participants moved through flows with significantly less hesitation.
03
Section checklists
A lightweight pattern introduced before each section begins. Not instructions, but preparation information. Users arrived at each section knowing exactly what they'd need, reducing backtracking and mid-flow errors.
04
Review pages
Allowing users to see a clear summary of their inputs before advancing, with the ability to edit without restarting. Designed to reduce rejection rates driven by entry errors, not intent.
In policy-driven systems, clarity doesn't come from simplification. It comes from structure and from design decisions that hold up under constraint.
SYSTEMS & SCALE
Consistency doesn't happen by accident at a program scale.
As the work expanded across pods and benefit types, I co-initiated a shared component library. This became a single source of truth for interaction patterns, component states, and question variants. An active tool that let multiple design pods ship consistently without constant coordination overhead.
I also introduced Design QA checkpoints as work shipped. This is involved auditing screens in build (and in context) to catch drift early and surface systemic gaps before they compounded.
OUTCOME
Structure builds confidence. Confidence reduces errors.
User testing showed participants moving through modernized flows with little to no guidance. They began naturally reusing patterns, encountering fewer moments of hesitation, and expressing more confidence before submitting. The homepage, checklists, and review pages worked together, not in isolation.
The program continues to scale. I'm currently embedded with the planning team, working directly with program leadership on what comes next.
LEARNING
In policy-driven systems, clarity doesn't come from simplification. It comes from structure, reusable patterns, and design decisions that hold up under constraint. This project taught me that meaningful design often lives in the mess, and that resilience and systems thinking matter as much as craft
NDA NOTICE
This work is under NDA. Detailed flows, design decisions, and validation findings are available to discuss in conversation.