Case Study · Singtel

BIG
Connect

Reimagining the employee experience for Singtel's workforce.

Case study being expanded

Overview

More than a redesign.
A rethink of how work feels.

BIG Connect is Singtel's employee-facing mobile app — the front door to a range of workplace services, from facilities and IT support to HR tools and internal communications. Over time, the app had accumulated features without a unifying experience logic, leaving employees unsure of what the app could do and reluctant to use it.

The revamp was not simply about refreshing screens. It was about understanding why employees weren't engaging, what the app needed to become in the context of a changing workplace, and how to build consensus across a complex web of business, product, and technology stakeholders — each with legitimate but sometimes competing priorities.

As Product Experience Lead, I worked closely with product, engineering, business, and workplace stakeholders to define the experience vision, conduct research, and guide design strategy from concept through delivery. The detailed case study is currently being prepared and will be published soon.

The real challenge wasn't the interface. It was helping people across the organisation agree on what a good employee experience should feel like — and why it mattered.

The Challenge

A layered problem
without a simple fix.

01
Fragmented employee experiences Workplace services existed across multiple touchpoints with no coherent journey connecting them. Employees had to know where to look before they could get anything done.
02
Low discoverability Features and services that employees needed were buried or poorly labelled. The app reflected how the organisation was structured internally — not how employees thought about their needs.
03
Balancing priorities across diverse stakeholder groups Each business unit had a view on what the app should prioritise. Aligning these groups around a shared understanding of employee needs — rather than organisational convenience — required sustained facilitation and trust.
04
Managing complexity at scale With multiple services, teams, and delivery timelines involved, maintaining design consistency and strategic coherence across the initiative required clear principles and ongoing stewardship.

Approach

Starting with
listening.

Before any design work began, I focused on understanding the landscape — not just the usability gaps, but the organisational dynamics that had shaped them. This meant spending time with employees across different roles and functions, understanding not just what they struggled with, but what they had stopped expecting the app to do for them.

Research findings were synthesised and translated into journey maps and opportunity areas that served a dual purpose: they grounded design decisions in employee reality, and they gave stakeholders a shared language to talk about the problems we were trying to solve. Creating that shared understanding was as important as the design itself.

Workshops brought cross-functional teams together to pressure-test assumptions, surface competing perspectives, and build alignment around principles that would guide design decisions throughout the project. These sessions were not about generating ideas — they were about establishing the conditions for good decisions to be made.

Contribution

Where I spent
my energy.

My involvement spanned strategy, research, and hands-on design — with particular attention to the work that happens between deliverables: the conversations, the synthesis, the moments of alignment that allow a complex project to move forward with clarity.

User Research Experience Strategy Information Architecture UX Design Workshop Facilitation Stakeholder Engagement Product Design Leadership

Outcomes

What shifted
as a result.

Improved discoverability Workplace services became easier to find and navigate, reducing friction in the everyday employee experience.
A more cohesive employee experience A unified design language and information architecture brought consistency across previously fragmented services.
Stronger stakeholder alignment Cross-functional teams developed a shared understanding of employee needs and agreed design principles — a foundation that continued to guide decisions beyond the initial delivery.
A platform for future experience initiatives The revised architecture and design system created a sustainable foundation for ongoing improvements to the employee app ecosystem.

Reflection

What this project
taught me about change.

Projects like BIG Connect are a reminder that the most significant design challenges in organisations are rarely about pixels. They are about how people understand their own context, how different teams perceive value, and what it takes to shift those perceptions in a direction that serves the people the organisation is meant to serve.

The design work created the artefacts and the prototypes, but the more durable contribution was helping build a culture within the team where employee experience was treated as a strategic input rather than an output. That shift doesn't show up in a UI — but it shapes everything that follows.

I also came away with a sharper appreciation of how much of design leadership is about holding space — for ambiguity, for competing perspectives, for the time it takes to build genuine consensus rather than manufactured alignment. The projects that endure tend to be the ones where the people involved feel a real sense of ownership over the decisions made.

Good workplace experience design is really just good organisational design — with the employee at the centre of the conversation.

Work in progress — This case study is being progressively documented. Additional details, artefacts, and outcomes will be added over time as the full story is assembled. What you see here represents how I think, what I value in design practice, and how I approach complex problems — even before the complete picture is ready to share.