ALEX on Leave of Absence
ALEX on Leave of Absence is part of Jellyvision's ALEX Benefits Platform. Like ALEX Benefits Counselor, it simulates a conversation with a real person: asking questions, remembering answers, and offering personalized guidance with a bit of personality. Its goal: guide employees through the daunting leave-of-absence process, so they can find out, anonymously, how much time they can take, how much they'll be paid, and whether their job is protected.
Role
Lead Media Design & Production, Interactive Design, Technical-Creative Liaison
Team
Cross-functional — Product Owner, Writer/Director, Creative Direction, Engineering, Sound Design, QA
Client
Jellyvision (ALEX Benefits Platform)
Type
Interactive & eLearning, HR Tech
Year
2016-2018
Challenge
Leave of absence is one of the most stressful, confusing moments in someone's work life, and one of the hardest to design for. On top of each employer's own leave policies, employees have to navigate FMLA, a patchwork of different state leave laws, and their own saved PTO, often while dealing with a major life event at the same time. Someone applying for maternity leave, for example, might be eligible for pay from several sources at once: short-term disability insurance, their employer, the state, and any saved time off, with no single place that adds it all up. ALEX needed to take on that complexity itself and hand the employee back just three answers: how much time they can take, how much they'll be paid, and whether their job is protected.
Approach
I joined the ALEX on Leave of Absence team during the initial concept and planning phase, before there was a product, only a problem to solve. I led media design and production on three high-fidelity prototypes (FMLA Maternity Leave, California Maternity Leave, and Illness/Injury Leave), which became the foundation for the fully functional final product.
Because the underlying business logic was so complex, my role stretched beyond traditional media production. I spent many days working directly with the Product Owner and Writer/Director to work through the leave and pay logic in detail, then translated that logic into the product's script and conditional structure, arranging audio, text, art, and motion within Jellyvision's in-house development tool so each employee's path adapted to their specific situation. I also acted as a technical-creative bridge, translating ideas between the writer and engineering team, beyond normal production responsibilities.
The centerpiece of the product was a dynamic pay-and-time chart: a visual timeline showing an employee's leave length alongside every source of pay, layered in as color-coded segments and narrated by ALEX's voice talent as it built. Getting that chart built and tested took months of close collaboration with engineering, and QA was especially difficult given how many leave scenarios the logic had to account for.
Beyond design and production, I worked with the broader team on new feature requests, coordinated with engineers on data integration, and reviewed client customizations as part of the Media Production review team to keep quality consistent.
Impact
ALEX on Leave of Absence launched as part of Jellyvision's broader ALEX Benefits Platform, the same product family that reaches 18M+ employees across 1,500+ companies, turning one of the most confusing HR processes into a guided, anonymous conversation. By doing the pay and eligibility math up front, the product cut down on the back-and-forth employees would otherwise need with HR, and made a genuinely stressful moment easier to navigate.
The Pay & Time Chart
A dynamic, color-coded timeline that answers the question every employee on leave actually has: when does my paycheck cover me, and from where? In the example below, saved vacation and sick time cover the elimination (waiting) period and any unpaid time, one of dozens of pay-source combinations the chart had to visualize clearly.
Building the Answer From Scratch
Unlike most of my work, this one started with a blank page: no existing product, just a hard problem and a small team figuring out the logic together. It's the project where my role stretched furthest beyond traditional media production, into the business logic and technical decisions that shaped what ALEX could actually say and do.