Darwinbox · Expenses Management

Uplifting the Expense Experience

The brief was aesthetics. The opportunity was experience. Team of 8, dev-ready in a week.

Features designed to make every moment faster

Actor types, each with a moment technology could improve

1 week

Full design sprint — ideation to dev-ready

Role

Sr. Manager UX — Lead

Company

Darwinbox HRMS

Scope

Targeted mobile experience improvements

Platform

Mobile — iOS + Android

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Mobile expense app — OCR receipt capture screen and GPS multi-stop trip tracking

The Opportunity

The workflow worked. Technology had moved further.

Expense management at Darwinbox was functional — employees submitted, managers approved, finance processed. But mobile technology had advanced: native camera, OCR, GPS. Each actor's workflow had moments where that technology could save time and remove unnecessary effort. That's what ideation surfaced. That's what we built for.

Employee

Receipts came from the photo library — attached, then entered manually. Amount, date, merchant, one field at a time. Every expense, the same effort.

Manager (L1 / L2)

Approvals, corrections, push backs — all happened at a desk. A quick decision or a correction request meant the workflow waited until someone sat down.

Finance / HR Admin

Second-level approvals and tracking reimbursement status across employees required desktop access. A quick status check or an approval decision meant sitting down first.

The Design Approach

Targeted improvements — aesthetic where asked, experiential where it mattered

Eight designers. One week. The brief was to make the module look better. During ideation, we identified specific mobile moments — employees capturing expenses in context, managers making decisions away from their desk, finance tracking a pipeline on the move — where technology could do more than aesthetics. We pursued only those that would genuinely change the experience.

Native camera capture with OCR

Receipt capture moved from a retrospective task to an in-context action. Native camera at the moment of expense, OCR extracting the details automatically, GPS tagging the location. The effort shifted from the user to the technology.

At a restaurant, receipt in hand.

Draft saving

The moment of capture and the moment of submission are rarely the same. Draft saving acknowledged that — let employees capture what they had and return to complete it without losing context or starting over.

Mid-trip, interrupted.

On-the-go approvals and push backs

The approval decision belongs to the moment the request arrives, not the next time someone opens a laptop. Quick approvals, push backs, and correction requests — all actionable on mobile.

Between meetings, request waiting.

Finance tracking and second-level approvals on mobile

Pipeline visibility and second-level approvals moved from desktop-only to mobile-first. A clear status view, actionable from anywhere, without switching contexts.

On the move, approvals not waiting.

Activity log

Submission shouldn't be where visibility ends. An activity log — approver names, timestamps, comments, status changes — made every request transparent to everyone in the chain.

After submitting, no longer wondering.

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Mobile expense experience — employee submission through multi-level approval to finance processing; OCR receipt capture and activity log screens

Shaping the Brief

The brief changed because the opportunity was bigger

The original brief was aesthetic uplift. During ideation, I identified specific moments — receipt capture, mobile approvals, status visibility — where targeted experience improvements would add genuine value beyond aesthetics. I made the case to expand scope selectively, brought a team of 8 into a structured sprint, and we delivered design-complete in a week.

The case I made for the activity log

In early scope discussions the activity log was deprioritised as "nice to have." My argument was direct: the most common support request in enterprise reimbursement workflows is "where is my request?" An activity log doesn't just improve the experience — it eliminates a category of support load entirely. It stayed in scope.

Draft saving involved a similar kind of advocacy. The existing mental model was batched submission — collect receipts through the week, sit down, submit everything at once. My argument was that this model was itself the friction. Capturing at the moment of expense and submitting when ready are two separate actions; treating them as one was creating an unnecessary task. Draft saving separated them.

The design principle that drove every decision

The best mobile enterprise UX doesn't simplify the enterprise workflow. It redesigns the touchpoints where mobile actually helps — capture, tracking, status visibility — and leaves the complexity where it belongs: in the desktop experience for administrators who need it.

Impact

A module that made an acceptable workflow genuinely better

Product

Native camera capture with OCR designed to close the gap between expense happening and expense captured
Draft saving designed to eliminate the dedicated submission session — capture on the go, submit when ready
Mobile approval chain designed to make decisions happen when requests arrive, not when desks are available

Business

Activity log designed to make every request self-explanatory — no follow-up needed
On-the-go approvals designed to reduce approval wait time across all levels
Finance mobile view designed to give admins pipeline visibility without desktop dependency

Strategic

Design decisions expanded scope beyond the brief — from aesthetic uplift to experience improvement
Eight designers, one week — delivery pace that matched the product team's momentum
Mobile-first approach applicable across other Darwinbox HRMS modules