AIRVISA — Building a B2B SaaS Platform to Streamline HR Visa Management
In this project, I led the design of a B2B SaaS platform for HR teams at AIRVISA, working as the only full-time designer with engineers and a product manager.
I started by focusing on understanding real HR workflows through in-depth user research. This allowed me to translate complex legal and compliance requirements into an intuitive, easy-to-use experience that HR teams could rely on in their daily work.
Project Overview
My Role
Product Designer
Teammates
1 Project Manager, 3 Developers, 1 Designer
Platform
Web / Mobile
Timeline
January 2025 – June 2025
Project Background
AIRVISA’s mission is to eliminate unreasonable immigration procedures in Japan and help build a more diverse and inclusive society. Initially, the company offered a B2C online visa application service for foreign residents in Japan.
In the B2C space, marketing efficiency was low because it was difficult to reach users at the right time, especially when visa renewals were actually needed. This made it difficult to scale the service in a sustainable way.
To address this, AIRVISA decided to shift its business strategy and enter the B2B space. Instead of targeting individuals, we built a platform that allows HR teams to manage employee visa information efficiently, so companies would naturally rely on AIRVISA when visa renewals were needed.
For AIRVISA, launching this B2B product marked a major turning point in the business. For me, this project reinforced how design can play a critical role in business success, especially when building a product from scratch.
Design Process
1. User Interviews
As the first step of the design process, I conducted interviews with 15 HR professionals who manage foreign employees. The goal was to deeply understand their current workflows and the challenges they face in managing visa-related tasks.
Key Challenges in Visa Management for HR Teams
HR teams constantly worry about missing visa expiration dates. Since illegal employment becomes the company’s responsibility, this creates ongoing stress for HR professionals.
HR teams are already busy with their core responsibilities and struggle to find enough time to manage visa-related tasks efficiently.
Collecting required information from employees is time-consuming. Responses are often delayed, and HR teams frequently need to follow up multiple times.
Existing tools, such as spreadsheets, are inefficient and often lead to human errors, making visa management even more stressful.
2. Persona
Based on insights from user research, we created personas to guide user-centered product development. We continuously updated them to reflect current users. This made the personas more than static documents—they became a living tool that helped the team make informed decisions and drive discussions.
What Made These Personas Effective
Instead of treating personas as static documents, I updated them four times as new insights emerged. This kept them relevant and helped the team use them as practical tools for decision-making.
Because visa applications happen multiple times over a person’s life, I designed the personas with a time-based perspective. Each persona was connected to a broader life journey that included key life events and changes.
3. Context Scenario
To better understand the context in which users interact with the product, I created context scenarios. By mapping users’ actions, thoughts, and emotions over time, these scenarios helped reveal real usage situations and needs that could not be captured by personas alone.
What Made the Scenarios Effective
At this stage, I intentionally set aside technical constraints and focused on an ideal experience from the user’s perspective. By asking “What would the ideal experience look like if anything were possible?”, I was able to surface core needs and expectations that might otherwise be overlooked.
4. User Flows
Based on insights from user research, I organized functional requirements and structured related features into user flows. These flows defined how screens connect to each other and became the backbone of the overall product experience.
How I Addressed the Challenge
Because HR workflows vary widely across companies, the product needed to support flexible user actions. This flexibility increased the number of possible paths, making the user flows more complex and harder to navigate. To address this, I carefully reviewed and organized each branch in the flows, clarifying where and why paths split. By simplifying and optimizing these branches, I ensured that users could always reach the information they needed without confusion, regardless of their situation.
5. Wireframing
Based on the user flows, I created low-fidelity wireframes to explore layout, information structure, and key interactions.
How I Addressed the Challenge
Ideally, usability testing would be conducted at this stage to validate assumptions early. However, due to time constraints, it was not possible to run user tests before moving forward. To address this, I actively gathered feedback from engineers and the product manager and refined the wireframes through close collaboration. This allowed me to move the design forward responsibly while accounting for technical constraints. Even with limited time and resources, I focused on building a clear, user-centered foundation that could be improved in later iterations.
6. Mockups
After completing the wireframes, I translated them into high-fidelity mockups by extending the existing design system and using reusable UI components. In this phase, I focused on visual details and micro-interactions. The UI was designed based on insights from user research, including user characteristics, work environments, and adoption contexts, with the following priorities in mind:
Based on these considerations, I carefully designed visual hierarchy, component structure, alert prioritization, and color usage. The goal was to enable HR professionals to quickly find critical information and complete tasks with minimal effort.
7. Usability Testing
Before launch, I conducted usability testing with eight participants using an interactive prototype to evaluate the effectiveness of the user-centered design in realistic usage scenarios.
Based on key findings from the sessions, I iterated on the design with a focus on UI elements, interaction flow, and UX writing. These improvements significantly enhanced the usability of the product.
Design System
In this project, I actively used and extended the existing design system, which our team had built from scratch. It started at a small scale and gradually evolved into a more scalable system through continuous discovery and improvement.
As the foundation of the design system, we adopted MUI (Material UI). By leveraging MUI’s design principles and component structure, we were able to improve development speed and maintain consistent quality, while still allowing flexible customization to meet brand and product requirements.
The current design system consists of the following elements: Logo / Color / Typography / Icon / Illustration / Component Library
Outcomes
As a result of these design efforts, the product exceeded its business goals and achieved high user satisfaction.
I believe this was driven by a strong focus on user research, well-defined personas and scenarios, and a consistent user-centered approach throughout the project.