work < ComplyAI
Simplifying AI compliance for small businesses
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
April - June 2026
Collaborators
3 Designers
1 PM
Tools
Figma
Claude
Overview
Making compliance risk easier to understand
ComplyAI helps small and mid-sized businesses identify AI compliance gaps and prioritize what to fix. I focused on designing the dashboard so risk, severity, and next steps were easier to scan and act on.
The Problem
Small teams struggled to turn AI regulation into clear next steps
As AI regulations expand, smaller teams without dedicated compliance expertise can struggle to translate legal requirements into clear and actionable priorities.
European Commission
Official guidance was created to clarify whether AI Act obligations apply and what organizations are expected to do.
r/Entrepreneurs
Smaller teams were openly struggling with scope, classification, and what compliances actually required of them.
The problem wasn’t access to regulation. It was knowing what applied and what to do next.
Solution preview
Turning compliance risk into a clearer hierarchy
I designed a dashboard that brings compliance health, severity, and individual findings into one scannable experience.
Research
Finding where compliance breaks down
With limited access to clients involved with compliance, we began with desk research across multiple startup and compliance communities, then mapped our riskiest assumptions around trust and applicability.
“Does this apply to us?”
Applicability came first
Teams often struggled to understand whether their use of AI created regulatory obligations in the first place.
Design implication →
Give users context before legal detail.
“What do we do next?”
Information wasn’t action
The bigger challenge was turning regulation into something a team could actually respond to.
Design implication →
Make priority visible through severity.
“Can I trust this?”
AI needed evidence
Automated compliance guidance was harder to trust when the reasoning behind it wasn’t visible.
Design implication →
Keep regulatory context attached to findings.
Design Decision #1
Reducing a dashboard of messy metrics into a readable compliance snapshot
Early concepts had every compliance signal as its own metric, which made it difficult to quickly answer the most important question: How healthy is this system right now? I consolidated the summary into a focused status card while keeping the key context nearby.
- Broad coverage of compliance info
- Too many competing metrics
- Important relationships were unclear
- Stronger Hierarchy
- Severity and health not connected
- Status still felt split across the cards
- Scannable under 3 seconds
- Key context is not overwhelming
- Health status and severity are one
Design Decision #2
Turning diagnoses into next steps
Early findings explained what was wrong, but still left users to figure out what to do next. I added a recommended task to each finding so users could move from understanding the issue to taking action without leaving the dashboard.
Final Design
A clearer view of AI compliance risk
Designing with AI
Exploring faster with AI
I used Claude to turn early research findings into rough layout directions and prototype ideas. It helped me compare different approaches quickly, while I used the research and team feedback to decide what was worth carrying forward.
Where AI Helped
Quickly generating rough structures gave me more directions to compare before committing to a layout
Where my judgement mattered
I decided what information deserved priority, removed competing metrics, and shaped the findings around clearer evidence
Reflection
What I learned beyond the interface
Designing through ambiguity
Feedback and direction weren’t always consistent, so I had to get more comfortable making decisions without having every question answered first. I learned to document my reasoning and keep the work moving instead of waiting for perfect alignment.
Taking ownership
My contribution went past the interface itself. I helped clarify open questions, coordinate with teammates, and keep design decisions connected to the broader product goals as the project evolved.
Not every direction ships
The concept shown here wasn’t ultimately the direction used in the final product. That was frustrating, but it taught me to separate the value of the process from whether a specific solution gets shipped.
What I’d do next time
With more time, I’d test the dashboard with compliance practitioners to see whether the guidance feels credible enough to act on.