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TriNet North Star Vision

A future-state product vision for TriNet across key HR workflows and the core platform.

Role Director, Product Design
Company TriNet
Scope UX Vision, Product Strategy
Timeline 2025

The vision

TriNet's platform had become useful but fragmented over time, so this North Star asked a simple question: what would the experience look like if we designed it fresh today? The result was a future-state vision to guide product decisions across the platform.

Time off – from both sides

We reimagined time off as one unified experience for employees and managers. Employees could see balances, requests, and history in one place, while managers got a simpler approval flow with the team context they needed to make quick decisions.

Time off dashboard with plan breakdowns, requests, and accrual history
The reimagined time off experience – employees see all plans, balances, requests, and history in one unified view.
Manager view with team requests, one-click approval, and team balance details
Managers review team requests, approve or deny in one click, and see full team balance data organized by plan.

Payroll – clarity for admins

Payroll was redesigned as a command center rather than a collection of disconnected screens. The vision brought alerts, schedule visibility, and inline editing together so admins could process payroll with more confidence and less navigation.

Payroll dashboard with notifications, calendar, and trends at a glance
The payroll command center – actionable alerts, a visual calendar, and payroll trends all in one view.
Payroll processing with inline editing and spreadsheet-like data grid
Payroll processing with inline editing – admins adjust hours, rates, and deductions without leaving the page.

Customer interactions – conversational intelligence

We envisioned a conversational interface that lets admins access complex HR and payroll data through natural language. Rather than navigating dashboards or running reports, users can ask questions like "How has payroll changed this year?" or "How many people did we hire?" and get clear, contextual answers right where they work.

TriNet AI Assistant executing a task and proactively offering next steps
The conversational interface surfaces HR and payroll insights through natural language, replacing the need to navigate dashboards or generate reports.

What this work achieved

The North Star gave design, product, and engineering a shared direction for the platform. It shifted conversations from isolated features to a broader experience strategy, and several patterns from the vision are already shaping production work.

Full platform End-to-end vision across onboarding, time off, payroll, support, billing, and dashboard
Adopted Vision adopted as the product team's strategic design direction
Influencing North Star patterns already shaping production roadmap decisions