Joining the Team and Designing Talbit 1.0 — Aleksi’s story

Hi, I’m Aleksi Meldo and I joined Talbit a bit less than a year ago. Before joining the team, I had already met with Kaisa a few times in various startup events and programs. We discussed together and shared what we were working on — at the time I was working on a completely different project. I was, however, impressed about the level of thinking and work that Kaisa had already put into formulating Talbit. What truly amazed me about the Talbit concept was the idea of putting the individual development path at the very center — a unique aspect in HR-tools and software. I also shared the frustration Kaisa has had with inefficient development discussions and managing your career development systematically together with your manager.

So, I joined the Talbit team with the intent of helping to bring this great idea into reality. I really wanted to put my UX/UI and Design skills to use and help create a HR-tool that would be actually easy and fun to use for every employee, not just the HR-department.

Designwise, we wanted Talbit to be fun to use and bring a feeling of lightness, playfulness and simplicity (at least compared to traditional big HRM-systems). The software should always be about supporting the individual development. The focus point of the design is therefore the individual development path — a key defining feature of Talbit.

The initial design decisions of the Path and Profile were done in couple of workshops together with the whole team and in some customer co-creation sessions, and then by iterating on the design we arrived at the final result and functionality. The green color palette was chosen because it’s friendly to eyes according to research and it gives a light fresh feeling when coupled with bright supporting colors. It is also Kaisa’s favorite color. Green also represents growth and learning — very key aspects of what we aim individuals to achieve by using Talbit.

In the actual front-end coding and design, we use a modified version of the Google’s Material Design, since it’s a well thought-out design system. It is Open Source and can be used freely by pretty much anyone, who wants to design a product quickly. There are also many great components and libraries, which can be used when creating a Material Design application.

No design is ever set in stone — it is always changing and evolving according to needs of users and the possibilities of technology. Lot of the decisions and details also come from a deep source of intuition. What is certain, however that the Talbit journey is just getting started. The software and ideology will continue to expand and evolve with the clear intention of enabling the successful growth and learning of individuals from all organizations.

Aleksi Meldo
Head of Product & Design
Talbit Oy

Read more about how Talbit can help you convert your performance appraisal –process into an individual talent management –process at https://www.talbit.fi