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Expense8
Modernizing enterprise expense & travel management
Expense8 had evolved into a feature-rich enterprise platform for expense, travel, and invoice management. I led redesigns across Expense8 and CardHero—modernizing the interface, improving usability and accessibility, and establishing scalable design patterns.
- Role
- Product Designer
- Year
- 2024–2025
- Timeline
- Approximately 1 year
- Team
- PM · Designer · Engineers · QA · Stakeholders
- Focus
- Enterprise · SaaS · Expense · Design System
- Tools
- Figma · Storybook · Jira
Responsibilities
- Product Strategy
- UX Research
- Information Architecture
- UX/UI Design
- Design System
- Accessibility (WCAG)
- Interactive Prototyping
- Developer Handoff
- Cross-functional Collaboration
01 — Overview
Context
Expense8 is an enterprise expense and travel management platform that helps organizations manage employee expenses, travel requests, approvals, invoices, reimbursements, and corporate spending. It is used by businesses ranging from small organizations to Australian government agencies, where compliance, accuracy, and reliability are critical. Alongside Expense8, I also worked on CardHero, a corporate card management solution that integrates with Expense8 to simplify company spending and reconciliation. Both products required balancing complex business rules with intuitive user experiences while maintaining consistency across the product ecosystem.
02 — Problem
The challenge
Over the years, new features had been introduced to meet evolving business requirements, resulting in an increasingly complex user experience. These issues increased cognitive load, slowed task completion, and created friction for both new and experienced users.
- Inconsistent UI patterns across modules
- Navigation that required unnecessary effort for common tasks
- Dense screens containing large amounts of information
- Legacy components that lacked visual consistency
- Accessibility gaps that limited usability for some users
- Limited scalability for introducing future features efficiently
02 — Goals
What success looked like
- Simplify complex enterprise workflows
- Improve usability without disrupting existing business processes
- Create a consistent visual language across Expense8 and CardHero
- Improve accessibility by designing interfaces aligned with WCAG guidelines
- Build reusable components to improve scalability and design consistency
- Strengthen collaboration between design and engineering through standardized design documentation
03 — Research
How we learned
Before designing solutions, I worked closely with product managers, stakeholders, and engineers to understand existing workflows and business requirements.
- Reviewing existing product flows
- Understanding business and compliance requirements
- Evaluating user pain points from stakeholder feedback
- Conducting heuristic evaluations of existing interfaces
- Auditing UI consistency across multiple modules
- Reviewing accessibility requirements and opportunities for improvement
- Studying enterprise SaaS design patterns to identify best practices
Insight 01
Efficiency over visual complexity
Enterprise users wanted to complete repetitive tasks quickly without navigating through multiple layers of information.
Insight 02
Consistency reduced learning effort
Different interaction patterns across modules forced users to relearn similar actions, increasing cognitive load.
Insight 03
Accessibility benefits every user
Designing with accessibility in mind improved readability, navigation, and overall usability for all users—not only those requiring assistive technologies.
Insight 04
Reusable components accelerated development
A shared design language reduced design debt and made collaboration between designers and developers more efficient.
04 — Process
Approach
01
Product Audit
Reviewed existing screens across Expense8 and CardHero to identify inconsistencies, usability issues, and opportunities for simplification.
02
Workflow Mapping
Mapped complex enterprise workflows to better understand user journeys, task dependencies, and business rules before redesigning experiences.
03
Information Architecture
Reorganized layouts and content hierarchy to improve discoverability while preserving enterprise functionality.
04
Wireframing & Exploration
Explored multiple layout directions and interaction patterns before refining the strongest solutions.
05
High-Fidelity Design
Designed modern interfaces using reusable components, improved spacing, clearer typography, and consistent interaction patterns.
06
Accessibility Improvements
Updated color usage, typography, focus states, contrast, and interaction behaviors to align with WCAG accessibility standards.
07
Design System & Handoff
Worked closely with developers using Figma, Storybook, and Jira to ensure smooth implementation and design consistency across releases.
05 — Solution
What we designed
The redesign focused on making complex enterprise workflows easier to understand while preserving the flexibility required by organizations. The result was a more intuitive experience that supported both everyday users and enterprise administrators.
- 01Modernized visual design
- 02Simplified navigation patterns
- 03Improved information hierarchy
- 04Standardized UI components
- 05Consistent form and table experiences
- 06Enhanced accessibility
- 07Better responsive behavior across screen sizes
- 08Improved interaction feedback and system states
- 09Reusable design patterns shared across Expense8 and CardHero
Visuals
06 — Results
Impact
The redesign established a more consistent, scalable, and accessible foundation for both Expense8 and CardHero. By simplifying workflows, improving visual consistency, and strengthening collaboration between design and engineering, the products became easier to evolve while continuing to support the complex needs of enterprise customers.
- Enterprise
- Supported organizations from small businesses to Australian government agencies
- WCAG
- Introduced accessibility-focused improvements across redesigned experiences
- Consistency
- Reusable components and standardized patterns across Expense8 and CardHero
- Handoff
- Stronger design-to-development workflow through documentation and reusable components
07 — Reflection
What I’d carry forward
Designing enterprise software is about much more than creating visually appealing interfaces—it requires balancing business rules, technical constraints, compliance requirements, and user efficiency. This project reinforced the value of deeply understanding complex workflows before designing solutions. It also strengthened my ability to design scalable systems, advocate for accessibility, and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to deliver products that are both user-friendly and technically practical.