Turning Nav's struggling budget tool into “a dream tool” for 300 users
A 20% rise in user satisfaction at the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, measured by an internal before-and-after survey.
Nav's digital budgeting and forecasting tool had launched with significant usability issues and a discouraged team. Over 13 months, I revitalized the team, introduced human-centered design practices, and redesigned the salary budgeting app from research through prototyping to launch. This case focuses on the salary budgeting app; in the same platform, I also worked on the forecasting and budgeting app for operational costs.
Restoring the team before redesigning the product
The instinct on joining a project with a troubled product is to fix the product. I chose to fix the team first — no amount of good design would land if the team couldn't collaborate.
I introduced agile ceremonies and methods incrementally, adapted to what the team needed. Each iteration we got better at cooperation, communication, and experimentation. The structure created a safe space to try things, fail, and learn without blame — and a framework for managing stakeholders and resolving critical errors in time.
In parallel, I began introducing a user-centered design process — small at first, then more consistently — so that as the team's confidence grew, our way of working was already shifting toward research-backed decisions and continuous user involvement.
