This post written by Madison Goerend - Product Designer

This week CavnessHR is in the Bay working on our responsive HR mobile application. Working from co-working space CoBiz, as well as WeWork. It’s been a long time coming and we are very excited to hit the ground running with this project. Previously I’ve worked on a design team to create the consumer facing website, and solo on the client facing platform, and now we’ve made it all the way to the mobile application! It is a really cool thing to see CavnessHR come to life from the ground up, and be a part of this process.

In the past our work was done remotely, collaborating with developers as well as stakeholders via Zoom and email. For this massive milestone we’ve journeyed as a team to San Francisco in the hopes of amping up our capabilities, and building a world-class HR app. Here in San Francisco we’ve acquired Matthew Oltendorf, who is somewhat of a prodigy of a software engineer (don’t ask him though, he’s much too modest about his own accomplishments). Matt has a unique approach to coding that not only builds the product to requirements, but also simplifies his work for a longer lasting foundation of code. This ensures product longevity, as well as ease of use for future updates.

Let’s talk about how we got to this point as a company. Back when I joined CavnessHR as a designer we had an outdated consumer website, no platform, and certainly no mobile application. We began by completely redoing the consumer website, with an aim to increase traffic and in response, clients. This was done over the course of 4 weeks. By the time we launched the new site, CavnessHR was unrecognizable with a new logo, brand identity, and even a fancy new chat bot function. Already website interaction/success was measurable, and increasing.

From there it was time to jump into the platform itself. Beginning with the desktop version (this is non-traditional in the design sense, but for an HR platform web first seemed most appropriate). Simplifying complicated HR processes into elegant user experience solutions was more of an intense process in comparison to the consumer site, many workshops were utilized, and hundreds of sticky notes were sacrificed to the cause. In the end it was worth it, as we are soon to launch our web platform for our current and waitlisted clients.

Now on to the fun stuff, mobile application! For me, it began with a 1 hour flight from Wichita, KS to St.Louis, MO (why do we go east just to go west?! Answer me Southwest?!) and then St.Louis all the way to San Francisco. Once there it was time to get down to business. In previous CavnessHR endeavors, design handoff was pretty hands off, if you know what I mean. Collaborating with development teams where complicated things could turn even more convoluted quickly as a result. In the case of our mobile application, I’m currently sitting directly across from our 5-star Product Engineer, Matt. If either of us has a question or concern we simply talk to each other, and we have the capability to see our app come to life in real time from a cracked iPhone (seriously put a case on your phone, everybody). Nothing beats it.

The CavnessHR mobile application has plans to revolutionize the way small businesses approach their HR, and empower them to make the right decisions for their business. With eventual AI integrations, simplified hiring processes, and immense document storage capabilities, it plans to set a new standard. Being a part of this process for so long has been an amazing experience. Every CEO/designer/developer dreams of having their product out in the wild, and now it’s coming true.