Unionen.se – Driving Digital Transformation for Sweden’s Largest Trade Union

UX/UI/DesignOPS

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Unionen is Sweden’s largest trade union, representing over 600,000 members and 27,000 elected representatives across the private sector. Since 2018, they’ve been on an ambitious journey to modernize and digitize their services, making them accessible online without the need for phone calls or paper forms. For four years, I’ve was part of that journey, helping Unionen shape tools and services that make life easier for both members and elected representatives.

My Role

At Unionen I worked closely with stakeholders, service designers, and developers to bring digital services to life. My responsibilities spanned the full design process:

  • User research – conducting interviews and uncovering both user and organizational needs

  • Concept and requirements – translating findings into clear requirements and design direction

  • Design and prototyping – building prototypes, testing with real users, and refining based on feedback

  • Final design – delivering pixel-perfect designs and supporting developers during implementation

I also established and maintained Unionen UI, the organization’s design system, and supported technical design questions such as image optimization and frontend framework alignment.

Unionen UI – The Design System

To keep a consistent and scalable design language, I created Unionen UI, a Figma-based design system.

It includes:

  • Colors, typography, shadows, icons, and components

  • Documentation covering everything from icon creation to modal usage guidelines

  • Built-in references to Sass variables and codebase naming conventions to streamline collaboration with developers

The system enables designers to prototype quickly, deliver polished designs, and maintain consistency across projects.

Smart components

All components were built with auto layout and variables, making them responsive and ready for use in both high fidelity prototypes and final handovers.

Icon library

I created a custom library of 200+ hand crafted icons in two detail levels (16x16 and 24x24 px), optimized for use across Unionen’s digital platforms.

Designing for Members

Unionen’s members represent over 88,000 workplaces, with diverse roles, backgrounds, and needs. Most only visit Unionen.se occasionally, usually when they need quick help.

This meant one principle guided all member-facing services: keep it simple.
I worked on tools and content such as:

  • A vast knowledge base on work law

  • A salary coach

  • A collective agreement reader

  • Data collection campaigns that feed back into personalized statistics for members

Designing for Elected Representatives

Unionen also relies on thousands of elected representatives, some deeply involved, others only active a few hours a year. Designing for them required balancing power and simplicity: tools needed to support advanced use cases while remaining intuitive for occasional users who might only log in a few times each year to update their union club’s contact information or to send in the yearly meeting documentation.

Case Study:
The Annual Meeting Tool

For most Unionen clubs, the annual meeting is the biggest event of the year—presenting yearly results and electing new representatives. It’s also a stressful process with a lot of admin work before, during, and after.

To streamline this, we designed the Annual Meeting Tool—a step-by-step digital assistant that guides representatives through the entire process.

Before the meeting

  • Representatives set a date and generate a suggested agenda directly in the tool

  • Built-in templates help them send invitations via email or news posts

  • Extra features like quick-copy templates and .ics calendar invites make distribution seamless

  • Guides and templates ensure all required documents are prepared correctly

During the meeting

  • The interactive agenda keeps representatives on track, with automatic saving to prevent data loss

After the meeting

  • A registration wizard simplifies logging who was elected

  • The tool automatically generates a meeting protocol, editable by the secretary before digital signing via BankID

  • Adjusters sign digitally as well, ensuring a smooth and compliant workflow

  • Final documents can be uploaded and submitted directly to Unionen

Impact and Value

For elected representatives, the tool removes complexity and stress—making it easier to plan, run, and finalize annual meetings.

For Unionen, the impact has been just as significant:

  • Previously, protocols from 2,500 clubs varied greatly in quality and completeness

  • Missing or inconsistent information created heavy administrative overhead

  • With nearly 75% of clubs now using the Annual Meeting Tool, incomplete submissions have dropped sharply, freeing Unionen employees from repetitive follow-ups

This project reflects the kind of design work I value most: creating tools that are genuinely useful, helping both individuals and organizations save time, reduce friction, and focus on what matters.