People rarely return to a former employer by coincidence, especially after a decade away. In Emma Varjo’s case, the return to Frends came with a very different mission than the one she left behind years earlier.

Back then, she joined Frends as an integration developer before moving into the R&D team, working closely with the platform itself. But over time, another challenge started pulling her attention away from implementation and toward something broader: how software feels when one interacts with it.

Today, Emma is back at Frends as the company’s first Head of UX and Design, helping shape how users experience the Frends platform at a time when usability, clarity and product experience matter more than ever.

Coming back with a new perspective

Returning to Frends wasn’t something Emma originally planned. “It is a special kind of feeling to return to a familiar office and employer,” she says. “When you leave, you usually do not expect to come back.”

Her first experience with Frends left a lasting impression early in her career. “I was first drawn to Frends by the culture,” Emma explains. “While the world of integrations was completely new to me, the feeling I got from the team and the people drew me in immediately.”

But as she worked more closely with the platform, her interests evolved.

“The longer I worked on the product, the more I found myself drawn to a different kind of problem: not only how the software worked, but how it felt to use,” Emma says.

That curiosity eventually led her away from Frends, but not away from the underlying challenge she had discovered there.

“I left Frends once because I cared too much about the user experience to stay in a role that could not fully address it,” she reflects. “Coming back to lead that work feels, in the best possible way, like finishing something I started.”

What a decade in UX taught her

The years between Emma’s two chapters at Frends took her through service design, product companies, consultancies and eventually game UX — environments where user experience is treated as a core strategic function rather than a finishing layer.

“In game development, you need both friction and delight, but you need to monitor them closely so the experience feels natural and engaging rather than frustrating and forced,” Emma says. “The same idea applies to tools and even teams.”

Beyond the design craft itself, she also developed a much broader perspective on product development and leadership.

“I learned how to identify what matters most, how to ensure the buy-in of those who were not yet convinced, and how to connect design decisions to broader business goals,” she explains.

Working in startups, growth companies, indie studios and consultancies often meant building UX practices from scratch, which meant creating structure, defining priorities and helping organizations understand why design matters in the first place.

That experience is now feeding directly into Frends’ next phase of platform development.

Why UX matters in enterprise software

Enterprise software has historically treated UX as secondary, functional, but rarely delightful. Emma sees that mindset changing rapidly, especially in integration platforms where users spend large parts of their workday.

“There can be a temptation to dismiss UX in enterprise software,” she says. “Users are professionals. They are paid to use the tool. So, does the experience really matter? It does, perhaps even more than in consumer products.”

For Emma, good UX is not about aesthetics alone. It directly affects productivity, learning and operational quality.

“Oftentimes, people see UX as just a visual candy on top of the product, when in reality it is one of the most important things. Users will likely abandon the product if it has poor UX. In a platform as powerful and wide-ranging as Frends, the difference between a confusing experience and a clear one becomes also operational,” Emma says.

That philosophy aligns naturally with one of Frends’ strongest differentiators: usability.

“Ease of use is already a key differentiator for Frends,” Emma says. “With a dedicated UX team, we want to make it even stronger.”

Building UX and design systematically 

One of Emma’s biggest priorities since returning has been making UX work more systematic across product development.

Earlier, design resources inside the product organization were smaller and more fragmented. Today, Frends has a growing UX and design team focused entirely on the platform experience itself, not customer delivery projects.

“That means looking at the platform experience as a whole and thinking about how design can support both usability and product development in the long run,” she explains.

One of the first initiatives was understanding users more deeply.

“We mapped out our different users and stakeholders: who they are, what they need, and how our work in the product organization affects each of them,” she says. “Without a clear and shared picture of who you are designing for, it is easy to optimize for the wrong things.”

That work now informs everything from UX research and feature design to interface consistency and prioritization.

Closing the loop between users and product

Emma is particularly energized by how Frends is rethinking user feedback and product collaboration.

“The bar for sharing a thought or flagging a frustration should be as low as possible,” she says. “With AI, we can lower that barrier and make incoming feedback more complete and actionable, spot patterns more easily, prioritize better and track progress in ways that were not practical before.”

But collecting feedback is only half of the challenge.

“We want to get much better at closing the loop and showing users when something changed because of what they told us,” Emma explains. “That connection between ‘you said this’ and ‘here’s what we did’ is one of the most powerful ways to build trust.”

As Frends continues to grow internationally, Emma sees UX and design becoming increasingly central to the product itself.

Her ambition is clear: “My goal, and our goal as a team, is to make ease of use not just a strength of Frends, but the standard against which other iPaaS platforms are measured.”

Interested in building the future of UX with Emma & the team? 

We are currently looking for a UX Designer & Researcher to join our growing team and help shape the Frends platform experience. 👉 Check out the job description and contact us here.