[ case study ]
From stacked lists,to a career story
I redesigned Veezo's profile from a résumé-shaped list into a timeline you can scan in seconds, with the full detail still there for anyone who wants to dig deeper.
Context
Veezo is a professional networking app for people with networks too large to keep in their heads. It turns a messy collection of connections into something you can actually use.
Most users already had LinkedIn profiles, so imported data gave them a fast starting point. But I didn't want the Veezo profile to feel like LinkedIn copied into a new layout - it needed to feel lighter, more scannable, and more personal.
This case study is about that shift: turning imported professional data into a clearer career story.
The profile problem
The profile was where we started, because Veezo is built around people. The LinkedIn sync solved the cold start - and created the real design challenge.
The profile had to do two things at once: make users feel represented by it, and help someone landing on it quickly understand who this person is - without scrolling through a long, résumé-shaped list.
It couldn't feel like LinkedIn copied into a new container.
Two questions guided the design:
How might we turn a long career history into a clear first impression?
How might we make imported data feel personal, even in an MVP?
Signal over noise
Remove first, then add back with intention. That became the principle behind the profile: strip the LinkedIn data down to the signals that tell a clear career story, then add details back only where they help the reader understand context, progression, or relevance.
The first layer was identity: photo, name, title, location, bio - centered, to put the person at the center, literally and conceptually. Before the profile showed career history, it had to feel like a person's profile, not a structured import.
Then came the harder part: experience and education.
Finding the timeline
A vertical list would only recreate the résumé feeling. My first attempts used horizontal cards - cleaner, but they showed items next to each other without explaining how they connected.
Then I found a very generic CSS timeline example: yellow dots on a line, lorem ipsum captions. It was ugly. Very ugly. But it captured what my cards were missing: the geometry of time.
A line. Anchored stops. Time markers.
The aesthetic was wrong, but the structure was right.
One combined timeline
Experience and education were still behaving like two separate lists, even though in real life they shape the same story. So I combined them into one professional timeline, with a small icon distinguishing career moments from education.
Before: experience and education behaved like separate résumé sections.
After: one chronological career story.
One last swap made the structure click: dates above the line, logos below. Time became the organizing structure - and each logo became a stop along the person's career path.
Keeping the details in context
The timeline gave a quick first impression, but deeper details still needed a home. A separate detail view per role sounded right - tap a job, see more. In practice it disconnected each role from the larger path, and imported entries were uneven: some rich, some nearly empty.
That brought the list back - as a secondary layer, not the main experience.
The timeline gave the first impression. The list gave the depth.
The outcome
The final profile has two reading modes: a visual career path for quick scanning, and a secondary list for context when the reader wants it. Instead of asking people to scan a résumé, it helps them understand a career path first - and only then choose whether to dig deeper.
Veezo closed before we had usage data on this one. What I do have is interview feedback - people kept pointing at the timeline, saying it felt easier to read, less like scrolling through a résumé.
Imported data still needs product opinion: good UX is deciding what the information should help someone understand.
What came next
Once the timeline helped people understand a career path, the profile grew layers specific to Veezo: Memories - personal notes and files saved about a person - and Lists, the groups and contexts they belong to. The profile started as a way to make LinkedIn data readable, and grew into a place for building personal context around professional relationships.
If I revisited it today, I'd push that further: less about showing everything I know about a person, more about helping me understand why this person matters now.