Break is a modern and easy-to-use employee leave management system designed to make applying for and managing leaves simple. I designed "Break" to solve the everyday problems employees and HR teams face, making the whole leave process faster, clearer, and way less stressful.

I'll show you what my process looked like when designing Break!

Here I used the Double Diamond design process ( Discover → Define → Develop → Deliver)

1. Discover 

So first things first I had to find out what’s actually not working with how people manage their leaves at work. I talked to a bunch of employees and HR people and I found out where it was messy.

• Employees didn’t know how many leaves they had left.
  
  

• HR was drowning in papers and emails trying to approve everything manually.
  
  

• No one really knew what was going on with leave approvals.
  
  

• People forgot to send documents like medical certificates all the time.

  
  

  I also peeked at other leave systems out there. Some were good, but most were kinda... meh
  
  

  Name	Pros	Cons
  	User-friendly tracking interface. Paid time off (PTO) requests and approvals. Comprehensive reporting for planning.	Limitations with customization. Expensive for smaller businesses. Lacks ability to carry over unused PTO.
  	User-friendly interface for easy tracking. Affordable pricing for small to mid-sized businesses. Integrates with popular calendar apps.	Limited integration with other HR solutions. Lacks ability to edit approved leave. Permission levels may not suit large organizations.
  	Forever-free plan for up to 10 users. Affordable pricing for small to mid-sized businesses. User-friendly visual platform.	Limited integrations with third-party apps. Reporting capabilities could be more extensive. Customer support response times can vary.

2. Define 

After all the research, it was clear that,

• Employees needed a simple way to apply for leave and check their balances.
  
  

• HR needed a less painful way to approve and track everything.
  
  

• Everyone needed better updates.
  
  

I split the system into two main parts

1. For the people applying for leave - Employee interface
   
   

2. For the ones approving or rejecting it - HR Portal
   
   

These were the main features each side needed,

3. Develop 

First, I sketched out user flows to see how people would move around the app.

Then, I made wireframes and later converted them up into High fidelity UI designs.

Login screen

Dashboard

Updates

Team

Calendar

HR Portal

When creating the screens I made sure,

• Everything’s clean and not cluttered
  
  

• Buttons and info you actually need are easy to find
  
  

• Calendars and reports aren’t confusing
  
  
  

4. Deliver 

At the end, I created interactive prototypes that looked and worked like the real product.

I got some people to test it out and tell what they thought. 

What I got from feedback are,

• Employees liked how easy it was to apply for leave.
  
  

• HR people liked the clean dashboards and fast approvals.
  
  
  

5.Wrap-Up

I was able to turn the messy leave management into something useful and nice to use.

Now with Break, both employees and HR can chill and handle leaves without the usual drama.