A-appen

A-appen is a founder project I am building with two others. As co-founder, I work with product direction, UX design and system structure, translating needs from physical operational environments into digital workflows, information architecture and interfaces.

• Founder & Managing Director — operations, finance, strategy
• Co-Founder — Product, UX & Systems (me)
• Head of Domain Expertise — industry relevance

Tools for everyday work grow feature by feature. Eventually people have to be trained before they can use them. The ones affected are those who just want to do their job, often while standing in the middle of it.

A digital interface only helps if it makes the system easier to understand – not if it merely gives it a new surface.

The product does not live on its own. It sits between the people who use it, the work they already do, and the decisions that have to be made.

• People → Work

  The role decides which tasks are relevant.

• Work → Information

  The tasks decide what has to be visible.

• Information → Decision

  The interface is where the choice is made.

The interface is only one layer of the experience.

Understand the system before designing the interface. Each layer asks its own question.

The system model decides the order in the interface: overview before context, context before detail, detail before action.

1. 01Overview — Role and what is urgent – nothing more.
2. 02Context — Where it belongs and what it connects to.
3. 03Detail — One object at a time, status before history.
4. 04Action — One primary action, with a clear confirmation.

Every task follows the same basic shape. That keeps the product predictable, also as new features arrive.

The interface should explain itself. The principles below are the ones I design by, across the screens.

• Hierarchy

  Status first, detail after.

• Navigation

  Few entry points, the same pattern everywhere.

• Feedback

  Every action should be confirmed immediately.

• Language

  Words from the working day, not from the database.

Consistency reduces complexity

The aim is that the same few patterns repeat everywhere, so new features don’t require new learning.

• Navigation

  Same entry, same placement, every time.

• Status marker

  Text and icon together – never colour alone.

• Object card

  One thing, always the same fields in the same order.

• Action + confirmation

  One primary action, and a clear response after it.

Screens from the product are not shared publicly while it is in development.

In my day job I work with automatic door systems. Physical environments set constraints that don’t exist in a Figma frame: hardware, safety, access, surroundings and how people actually move.

It is the same chain I see in A-appen – only with different layers.

The physical-work perspective informs the design context; it is not presented as formal UX work.

Accessibility is not an extra layer. Below are the design requirements guiding the product as it is built; they are not presented as validated implementation.

• 01

  Design requirement: not colour alone

  Status should be paired with text or an icon so information does not depend on colour vision alone.

• 02

  Keyboard access as a design requirement

  The target is a logical order, visible focus and Escape to close dialogs.

• 03

  Semantic structure as a design requirement

  The product should use correct buttons, links and heading levels before supplementary ARIA.

• 04

  Target size and motion goals

  Target: at least 44×44 px, with reduced animation when the user requests less motion.

These are the choices we work by. The product has not been audited against a specific WCAG standard yet.

This project strengthened my interest in systems thinking – how people, information, technology and physical infrastructure together shape the experience.

• What I learned

  When something feels complicated in the interface, the cause usually sits a layer deeper – in the data model or in how the information is divided.

• What I would explore next

  System architecture, and how early structural choices decide how easily a product can grow.

• What changed in how I think

  I no longer start with screens. I start with the objects, relations and roles – the screens follow from them.