J B
Menu
Marketplace: turning employer benefits into an app people open every day.
A concept with real ambition but no defined shape. I took it from an undefined idea to a mobile-first rewards ecosystem: the product strategy, the flows, and the system that hold it together.
Role
Director of Product Design
Company
Fufild
Platform
iOS • Android • Web
Scope
Strategy · UX · UI · Design system
The challenge
Employees received company benefits but rarely touched them after enrollment. Recognition programs were forgettable, fragmented, and delivered little long-term engagement.
The approach
Rather than add features, I designed a daily-use mobile experience where every interaction reduces friction, surfaces value quickly, and invites people back.
The outcome
45% of employees actively redeeming monthly points in the first deployment, 10 points above the industry benchmark. Early customers had over 70% engagement with employees.
01
Context
An idea with ambition, and nothing else yet.
The thesis was a daily-use app whose every interaction generates behavioral signal that powers an ecosystem around it: rewards, recognition, and the tools people need on shift.
Background
Employers were already paying for benefits and recognition, but the value never reached everyday life. Enrollment happened once, then the benefits disappeared into a portal nobody opened.
This was greenfield. There was no product until I designed it: no system, no flows, no visual language, no v1. I defined the project, explored the market, and designed the first version alone, iterating against what sales and support were hearing from prospects before we had customers of our own. Two designers joined in year two to help iterate on what existed. The design direction, the roadmap, and what shipped when have been mine since day one.
Who it’s for
Hourly & shift employees
On their feet, phone in pocket, minutes between tasks.
Managers
Need to recognize and inform their team without another tool.
Employers & HR
Fund rewards and need proof they’re landing.
Business goal
Turn employer benefit spend into measurable, everyday engagement, and give employers a signal they can act on.
02
The problem
Employees had benefits. They had no reason to come back to them.
Three problems shaped the product. Two in how employees experienced benefits, one in what there was to build on.
01
Invisible after enrollment
Benefits were chosen once and forgotten. Their value never surfaced in the moments people could actually use it.
02
Recognition that didn’t land
Programs were fragmented across tools and generic. Shift teams had no Slack or Teams, so recognition simply got lost.
03
No shape to build on
No system, no flows, no visual language. Without a foundation, every new feature would have been designed from scratch.
03
How decisions got made
No users yet, so I built the channels that told me what to do.
A greenfield product has no usage data and no customers to ask. This is the loop I ran instead, and it is where every finding on this page came from.
01
Start from the founders' problem
The company had identified the problem before it had a product. I took that framing, explored the market around it, and turned it into something designed rather than described.
Artifacts
Founder sessions · Market exploration · Problem framing
02
Use sales and support as the user channel
Before we had customers, the people talking to prospects were the closest thing to a user. Weekly alignment turned what they were hearing into direction I could design against.
Artifacts
Weekly channel alignment · Prospect feedback · Direction calls
03
Make the call, and own it
The feedback rarely agreed with itself, and it rarely named the real problem. Deciding which signal to act on and which to set aside was my job, not a consensus.
Artifacts
Concept comparisons · Prioritisation · Roadmap sequencing
04
Build the system before the screens multiply
Tokens, components and patterns went in early, so every later feature inherited a foundation instead of re-deciding one.
Artifacts
Tokens · Component library · Pattern docs
05
Ship it and watch what happens
I designed the internal portal that showed how each account was moving: who was onboarding, who was subscribing, who had stalled. That data replaced guessing about whether a decision had worked.
Artifacts
Internal usage portal · Account-level data · Adoption tracking
06
Change what the data says to change
Employees onboarding without redeeming pointed at the subscription flow, not the catalogue. That reading is what produced the wizard, and the confusion dropped after it.
Artifacts
Usage reads · Targeted redesigns · Post-change feedback
04
Solutions
Four decisions that shaped the product.
Each traces back to a problem above. Two of them replaced an earlier approach of mine that wasn't working.
Solution 01
A marketplace that feels like a lifestyle app
Problem
Rewards felt like an HR portal, so nobody browsed them.
What I designed
An editorial Discover feed organised around what people actually do and what's popular, rather than the product categories we had invented. That reorganisation also surfaced brands employees would never have browsed their way to.
Key decision
Show points as allocation use, never a raw number — “3,000 of 8,000 points available” means something; “6,000 points” doesn’t.
Solution 02
Recognition built for shift teams
Problem
Hourly teams have no Slack or Teams, so announcements and recognition got lost. Prospective customers kept asking for a chat feature.
What I designed
Teamwork: one hub mixing announcements, shifts and manager-granted shout-outs on a single board built for a phone between tasks.
Key decision
Chat was the request, not the problem. People didn't need more messages; they needed good work acknowledged and to know what was happening. I also kept manager-to-employee direct messaging out entirely, so nothing on the platform could turn into a negative conversation.
Solution 03
An assistant that shows up before you ask
Problem
Useful things were buried behind taps, mid-shift, with full hands.
What I designed
Signal: an ambient dock on every page, tap to ask or hold to talk, that surfaces the routine you need because you're on the schedule.
Key decision
Signal never watches. Personalization is manual, and the copy says so. Trust over cleverness.
Solution 04
A subscription wizard, after the feedback said so
Problem
Early feedback kept landing on the same thing: employees did not understand how to turn their points into an actual subscription.
What I designed
A step-by-step wizard that made the path explicit, from choosing a product through to confirming the points it would cost.
Key decision
Fix the step people were failing at rather than add something new. Feedback about subscription confusion dropped by roughly 60% after the change.
05
The system
The system behind the screens.
A single good screen is an accident. Marketplace needed a foundation every feature, and every team, could build on without re-deciding the basics.
01
Tokens & variables
Color, type, spacing and elevation as a single source of truth across iOS and Android.
90+ tokens
02
Component library
Composable primitives built up into patterns: cards, tiles, sheets, docks, versioned and documented.
100+ components
03
Interaction patterns
Reusable behaviors, like an opaque trigger that expands into a glass sheet, and zones that disappear when empty.
15–20 patterns
04
Governance & handoff
Documentation, design QA and a developer workflow that keeps design and build in parity.
4 products, 5th planned
06
Outcomes
What changed because of the work.
Measured on whether employees actually used what their employer was paying for, against an industry benchmark in a category most of these employers had never funded before.
70%+
Employees using the app and their monthly points
Across many customer accounts
45%
Engaged within the first month
First QSR deployment, against a 35% benchmark
20+
Companies live on the platform
At the time I left the company
3
Surfaces shipped from scratch
One mobile app, two web portals
Beyond the numbers
—
A shared design language product and engineering both build from
—
Employers who had never funded perks at all now had a program, not a better version of one
—
Employers gained a signal they can act on, not just a spend report
07
Reflection
What this project taught me.
Every product teaches the next product.
What I learned
Simplicity is the result of better decisions, not fewer features.
The strongest moments in Marketplace came from saying no to replies, to tracking, to raw numbers, rather than from adding anything.
What I’d do differently
Settle the navigation model earlier.
Open questions about where features live cost more the later they’re answered. I’d lock the information architecture before features start competing for it.
Next case study — Chapter II
Building Systems that Scale
Read case study
→
Open to new opportunities
Let’s build the next thing.
Let’s connect
→
joshuabalderson@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/joshua-balderson
Based in
Columbus, Ohio
Ten years designing for regulated, operationally complex industries: aviation, healthcare, financial services, and employee benefits.
© 2026 Joshua Balderson
J B
Work
Approach
About
Marketplace: turning employer benefits into an app people open every day.
A concept with real ambition but no defined shape. I took it from an undefined idea to a mobile-first rewards ecosystem: the product strategy, the flows, and the system that hold it together.
Role
Director of Product Design
Company
Fufild
Platform
iOS • Android • Web
Scope
Strategy · UX · UI · Design system
The challenge
Employees received company benefits but rarely touched them after enrollment. Recognition programs were forgettable, fragmented, and delivered little long-term engagement.
The approach
Rather than add features, I designed a daily-use mobile experience where every interaction reduces friction, surfaces value quickly, and invites people back.
The outcome
45% of employees actively redeeming monthly points in the first deployment, 10 points above the industry benchmark. Early customers had over 70% engagement with employees.
01
Context
An idea with ambition, and nothing else yet.
The thesis was a daily-use app whose every interaction generates behavioral signal that powers an ecosystem around it: rewards, recognition, and the tools people need on shift.
Background
Employers were already paying for benefits and recognition, but the value never reached everyday life. Enrollment happened once, then the benefits disappeared into a portal nobody opened.
This was greenfield. There was no product until I designed it: no system, no flows, no visual language, no v1. I defined the project, explored the market, and designed the first version alone, iterating against what sales and support were hearing from prospects before we had customers of our own. Two designers joined in year two to help iterate on what existed. The design direction, the roadmap, and what shipped when have been mine since day one.
Who it’s for
Hourly & shift employees
On their feet, phone in pocket, minutes between tasks.
Managers
Need to recognize and inform their team without another tool.
Employers & HR
Fund rewards and need proof they’re landing.
Business goal
Turn employer benefit spend into measurable, everyday engagement, and give employers a signal they can act on.
02
The problem
Employees had benefits. They had no reason to come back to them.
Three problems shaped the product. Two in how employees experienced benefits, one in what there was to build on.
01
Invisible after enrollment
Benefits were chosen once and forgotten. Their value never surfaced in the moments people could actually use it.
02
Recognition that didn’t land
Programs were fragmented across tools and generic. Shift teams had no Slack or Teams, so recognition simply got lost.
03
No shape to build on
No system, no flows, no visual language. Without a foundation, every new feature would have been designed from scratch.
03
How decisions got made
No users yet, so I built the channels that told me what to do.
A greenfield product has no usage data and no customers to ask. This is the loop I ran instead, and it is where every finding on this page came from.
01
Start from the founders' problem
The company had identified the problem before it had a product. I took that framing, explored the market around it, and turned it into something designed rather than described.
Artifacts
Founder sessions · Market exploration · Problem framing
02
Use sales and support as the user channel
Before we had customers, the people talking to prospects were the closest thing to a user. Weekly alignment turned what they were hearing into direction I could design against.
Artifacts
Weekly channel alignment · Prospect feedback · Direction calls
03
Make the call, and own it
The feedback rarely agreed with itself, and it rarely named the real problem. Deciding which signal to act on and which to set aside was my job, not a consensus.
Artifacts
Concept comparisons · Prioritisation · Roadmap sequencing
04
Build the system before the screens multiply
Tokens, components and patterns went in early, so every later feature inherited a foundation instead of re-deciding one.
Artifacts
Tokens · Component library · Pattern docs
05
Ship it and watch what happens
I designed the internal portal that showed how each account was moving: who was onboarding, who was subscribing, who had stalled. That data replaced guessing about whether a decision had worked.
Artifacts
Internal usage portal · Account-level data · Adoption tracking
06
Change what the data says to change
Employees onboarding without redeeming pointed at the subscription flow, not the catalogue. That reading is what produced the wizard, and the confusion dropped after it.
Artifacts
Usage reads · Targeted redesigns · Post-change feedback
04
Solutions
Four decisions that shaped the product.
Each traces back to a problem above. Two of them replaced an earlier approach of mine that wasn't working.
Solution 01
A marketplace that feels like a lifestyle app
Problem
Rewards felt like an HR portal, so nobody browsed them.
What I designed
An editorial Discover feed organised around what people actually do and what's popular, rather than the product categories we had invented. That reorganisation also surfaced brands employees would never have browsed their way to.
Key decision
Show points as allocation use, never a raw number — “3,000 of 8,000 points available” means something; “6,000 points” doesn’t.
Solution 02
Recognition built for shift teams
Problem
Hourly teams have no Slack or Teams, so announcements and recognition got lost. Prospective customers kept asking for a chat feature.
What I designed
Teamwork: one hub mixing announcements, shifts and manager-granted shout-outs on a single board built for a phone between tasks.
Key decision
Chat was the request, not the problem. People didn't need more messages; they needed good work acknowledged and to know what was happening. I also kept manager-to-employee direct messaging out entirely, so nothing on the platform could turn into a negative conversation.
Solution 03
An assistant that shows up before you ask
Problem
Useful things were buried behind taps, mid-shift, with full hands.
What I designed
Signal: an ambient dock on every page, tap to ask or hold to talk, that surfaces the routine you need because you're on the schedule.
Key decision
Signal never watches. Personalization is manual, and the copy says so. Trust over cleverness.
Solution 04
A subscription wizard, after the feedback said so
Problem
Early feedback kept landing on the same thing: employees did not understand how to turn their points into an actual subscription.
What I designed
A step-by-step wizard that made the path explicit, from choosing a product through to confirming the points it would cost.
Key decision
Fix the step people were failing at rather than add something new. Feedback about subscription confusion dropped by roughly 60% after the change.
05
The system
The system behind the screens.
A single good screen is an accident. Marketplace needed a foundation every feature, and every team, could build on without re-deciding the basics.
01
Tokens & variables
Color, type, spacing and elevation as a single source of truth across iOS and Android.
90+ tokens
02
Component library
Composable primitives built up into patterns: cards, tiles, sheets, docks, versioned and documented.
100+ components
03
Interaction patterns
Reusable behaviors, like an opaque trigger that expands into a glass sheet, and zones that disappear when empty.
15–20 patterns
04
Governance & handoff
Documentation, design QA and a developer workflow that keeps design and build in parity.
4 products, 5th planned
06
Outcomes
What changed because of the work.
Measured on whether employees actually used what their employer was paying for, against an industry benchmark in a category most of these employers had never funded before.
70%+
Employees using the app and their monthly points
Across many customer accounts
45%
Engaged within the first month
First QSR deployment, against a 35% benchmark
20+
Companies live on the platform
At the time I left the company
3
Surfaces shipped from scratch
One mobile app, two web portals
Beyond the numbers
—
A shared design language product and engineering both build from
—
Employers who had never funded perks at all now had a program, not a better version of one
—
Employers gained a signal they can act on, not just a spend report
07
Reflection
What this project taught me.
Every product teaches the next product.
What I learned
Simplicity is the result of better decisions, not fewer features.
The strongest moments in Marketplace came from saying no to replies, to tracking, to raw numbers, rather than from adding anything.
What I’d do differently
Settle the navigation model earlier.
Open questions about where features live cost more the later they’re answered. I’d lock the information architecture before features start competing for it.
Next case study — Chapter II
Building Systems that Scale
Read case study
→
Open to new opportunities
Let’s build the next thing.
Let’s connect
→
joshuabalderson@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/joshua-balderson
Based in
Columbus, Ohio
Ten years designing for regulated, operationally complex industries: aviation, healthcare, financial services, and employee benefits.
© 2026 Joshua Balderson
J B
Work
Approach
About
Marketplace: turning employer benefits into an app people open every day.
A concept with real ambition but no defined shape. I took it from an undefined idea to a mobile-first rewards ecosystem: the product strategy, the flows, and the system that hold it together.
Role
Director of Product Design
Company
Fufild
Platform
iOS • Android • Web
Scope
Strategy · UX · UI · Design system
The challenge
Employees received company benefits but rarely touched them after enrollment. Recognition programs were forgettable, fragmented, and delivered little long-term engagement.
The approach
Rather than add features, I designed a daily-use mobile experience where every interaction reduces friction, surfaces value quickly, and invites people back.
The outcome
45% of employees actively redeeming monthly points in the first deployment, 10 points above the industry benchmark. Early customers had over 70% engagement with employees.
01
Context
An idea with ambition, and nothing else yet.
The thesis was a daily-use app whose every interaction generates behavioral signal that powers an ecosystem around it: rewards, recognition, and the tools people need on shift.
Background
Employers were already paying for benefits and recognition, but the value never reached everyday life. Enrollment happened once, then the benefits disappeared into a portal nobody opened.
This was greenfield. There was no product until I designed it: no system, no flows, no visual language, no v1. I defined the project, explored the market, and designed the first version alone, iterating against what sales and support were hearing from prospects before we had customers of our own. Two designers joined in year two to help iterate on what existed. The design direction, the roadmap, and what shipped when have been mine since day one.
Who it’s for
Hourly & shift employees
On their feet, phone in pocket, minutes between tasks.
Managers
Need to recognize and inform their team without another tool.
Employers & HR
Fund rewards and need proof they’re landing.
Business goal
Turn employer benefit spend into measurable, everyday engagement, and give employers a signal they can act on.
02
The problem
Employees had benefits. They had no reason to come back to them.
Three problems shaped the product. Two in how employees experienced benefits, one in what there was to build on.
01
Invisible after enrollment
Benefits were chosen once and forgotten. Their value never surfaced in the moments people could actually use it.
02
Recognition that didn’t land
Programs were fragmented across tools and generic. Shift teams had no Slack or Teams, so recognition simply got lost.
03
No shape to build on
No system, no flows, no visual language. Without a foundation, every new feature would have been designed from scratch.
03
How decisions got made
No users yet, so I built the channels that told me what to do.
A greenfield product has no usage data and no customers to ask. This is the loop I ran instead, and it is where every finding on this page came from.
01
Start from the founders' problem
The company had identified the problem before it had a product. I took that framing, explored the market around it, and turned it into something designed rather than described.
Artifacts
Founder sessions · Market exploration · Problem framing
02
Use sales and support as the user channel
Before we had customers, the people talking to prospects were the closest thing to a user. Weekly alignment turned what they were hearing into direction I could design against.
Artifacts
Weekly channel alignment · Prospect feedback · Direction calls
03
Make the call, and own it
The feedback rarely agreed with itself, and it rarely named the real problem. Deciding which signal to act on and which to set aside was my job, not a consensus.
Artifacts
Concept comparisons · Prioritisation · Roadmap sequencing
04
Build the system before the screens multiply
Tokens, components and patterns went in early, so every later feature inherited a foundation instead of re-deciding one.
Artifacts
Tokens · Component library · Pattern docs
05
Ship it and watch what happens
I designed the internal portal that showed how each account was moving: who was onboarding, who was subscribing, who had stalled. That data replaced guessing about whether a decision had worked.
Artifacts
Internal usage portal · Account-level data · Adoption tracking
06
Change what the data says to change
Employees onboarding without redeeming pointed at the subscription flow, not the catalogue. That reading is what produced the wizard, and the confusion dropped after it.
Artifacts
Usage reads · Targeted redesigns · Post-change feedback
04
Solutions
Four decisions that shaped the product.
Each traces back to a problem above. Two of them replaced an earlier approach of mine that wasn't working.
Solution 01
A marketplace that feels like a lifestyle app
Problem
Rewards felt like an HR portal, so nobody browsed them.
What I designed
An editorial Discover feed organised around what people actually do and what's popular, rather than the product categories we had invented. That reorganisation also surfaced brands employees would never have browsed their way to.
Key decision
Show points as allocation use, never a raw number — “3,000 of 8,000 points available” means something; “6,000 points” doesn’t.
Solution 02
Recognition built for shift teams
Problem
Hourly teams have no Slack or Teams, so announcements and recognition got lost. Prospective customers kept asking for a chat feature.
What I designed
Teamwork: one hub mixing announcements, shifts and manager-granted shout-outs on a single board built for a phone between tasks.
Key decision
Chat was the request, not the problem. People didn't need more messages; they needed good work acknowledged and to know what was happening. I also kept manager-to-employee direct messaging out entirely, so nothing on the platform could turn into a negative conversation.
Solution 03
An assistant that shows up before you ask
Problem
Useful things were buried behind taps, mid-shift, with full hands.
What I designed
Signal: an ambient dock on every page, tap to ask or hold to talk, that surfaces the routine you need because you're on the schedule.
Key decision
Signal never watches. Personalization is manual, and the copy says so. Trust over cleverness.
Solution 04
A subscription wizard, after the feedback said so
Problem
Early feedback kept landing on the same thing: employees did not understand how to turn their points into an actual subscription.
What I designed
A step-by-step wizard that made the path explicit, from choosing a product through to confirming the points it would cost.
Key decision
Fix the step people were failing at rather than add something new. Feedback about subscription confusion dropped by roughly 60% after the change.
05
The system
The system behind the screens.
A single good screen is an accident. Marketplace needed a foundation every feature, and every team, could build on without re-deciding the basics.
01
Tokens & variables
Color, type, spacing and elevation as a single source of truth across iOS and Android.
90+ tokens
02
Component library
Composable primitives built up into patterns: cards, tiles, sheets, docks, versioned and documented.
100+ components
03
Interaction patterns
Reusable behaviors, like an opaque trigger that expands into a glass sheet, and zones that disappear when empty.
15–20 patterns
04
Governance & handoff
Documentation, design QA and a developer workflow that keeps design and build in parity.
4 products, 5th planned
06
Outcomes
What changed because of the work.
Measured on whether employees actually used what their employer was paying for, against an industry benchmark in a category most of these employers had never funded before.
70%+
Employees using the app and their monthly points
Across many customer accounts
45%
Engaged within the first month
First QSR deployment, against a 35% benchmark
20+
Companies live on the platform
At the time I left the company
3
Surfaces shipped from scratch
One mobile app, two web portals
Beyond the numbers
—
A shared design language product and engineering both build from
—
Employers who had never funded perks at all now had a program, not a better version of one
—
Employers gained a signal they can act on, not just a spend report
07
Reflection
What this project taught me.
Every product teaches the next product.
What I learned
Simplicity is the result of better decisions, not fewer features.
The strongest moments in Marketplace came from saying no to replies, to tracking, to raw numbers, rather than from adding anything.
What I’d do differently
Settle the navigation model earlier.
Open questions about where features live cost more the later they’re answered. I’d lock the information architecture before features start competing for it.
Next case study — Chapter II
Building Systems that Scale
Read case study
→
Open to new opportunities
Let’s build the next thing.
Let’s connect
→
joshuabalderson@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/joshua-balderson
Based in
Columbus, Ohio
Ten years designing for regulated, operationally complex industries: aviation, healthcare, financial services, and employee benefits.
© 2026 Joshua Balderson