Kartik Goel | Product Designer Portfolio

lyearn • shipped • 2026

Re-architecting org setup to work at scale

Turning Lyearn's rigid, one-dimensional org model into a flexible system that mirrors how companies are actually structured, to reduce set-up time significantly.

my role

Owned research, end-to-end design and finalised the new architecture concept (with backend lead).

team

1 Product Designer (Me), 1 Design Lead, 2 Engineers

project type

Full-Time

duration

3 Weeks

what’s the issue?

One rigid structure, and most companies couldn't fit

Fixed depth

Inconsistent Duplicate Job Profiles

but, of course, we’re not the first ones to solve this

findings from market research

How did established HR platforms solve this?

and we had to make it flexible, yet structured, because our clients were diverse

brain dump

So I went to the board and dumped all ideas, good or bad

I benchmarked Workday against SMB-focused tools like HiBob and BambooHR. Every platform picks a side on flexibility. Only ours fused the two structures into one, and the fusion was what broke.

but only 3 made the shortlist, and 1 became the anchor

Figma inspired component and variant system for job-profiles

Separate the 3 structures: Orgs, jobs, and employees (reporting structure)

Interpret reporting structure from org hierarchy

the new structures

The answer was to split the structures and connect them with a container

Instead of one chain doing three jobs, I built three independent structures and connected them with a single container called “Position”.

introducing positions

Position is the container that connected the 3 structures

A Position is a seat inside an org. A job profile is applied to it, and an employee is assigned to it. The employee gets their responsibilities from the profile on their seat. That lets the three structures stay separate but still connected.

now, let’s look at some behind the scenes

list v/s tree view

I conducted a task analysis to see what the users preferred

I had both views made, but I had to decide which view deserved the first look from the user, and it wasn’t very simple.

task 1

Create an Org of your choice

task 2

Add 2 Positions in that Org

task 3

Edit the Org and any 1 Position

group 1 (list → tree)

Avg. task completion was ~25% faster in the list view than in the tree view

group 2 (tree → list)

Avg. task completion was ~43% faster in the list view than in the tree view

The list view won, but 6 users said they need the tree view “once or twice a month”

so, I added a mode toggle, with list view as default

overshoot animation graph

the org card

Juggling model clarity, compact layout, and clean UI

For the tree view, the node card was important to get right. I had to represent the real data structure, keep the UI clean, all while maintaining compact cards for optimal tree view experience.

I explored many layouts for the Org card