User Interface Renewal Through the Eyes of a Software Developer

The renewal of Severa’s user interface is one of the product’s most significant development projects. Customers, UX designers, product owners and, of course, the developers are all deeply involved those who bring the new UI to life line by line. Senior Software Developer Juhana Repo has been part of Severa’s UI development from the very beginning.
In this blog, he shares what the renewal means from his perspective.

Who I Am and What I Do at Severa
I’m Juhana Repo, working in Severa’s product development as a Senior Software Developer and team captain. Most of my days are spent on frontend development, building the user interface. I’ve been part of Severa’s product development for ten years, and I’ve been involved in the UI renewal from day one.
Right now, my work focuses heavily on the renewal itself. I lead my team and also develop features for the new interface. Our team has been particularly responsible for the time tracking features, and I’ve also spent a lot of time improving the architectural foundation of the UI.

Better Code, Better Customer Experience
Severa’s current user interface is a Single Page Application (SPA) built originally with JavaScript and more recently with TypeScript. We initially chose InfernoJS as our UI library due to its performance and small footprint. Since then, React has become the industry standard with a vast ecosystem around it.
In the UI renewal, we moved to React because its ecosystem provides everything needed to build modern, high quality interfaces. With React, we’re able to build our own design system and component library, and significantly improve accessibility. This makes development smoother, speeds up our work, and most importantly creates a better experience for our customers.

Technical Choices Matter for Customers Too
It might seem like technical decisions only interest developers, but they have a major impact on how the product works.
– Performance improves because the interface renders faster.
– Security improves thanks to React’s active community and continuous maintenance.
– Consistency and accessibility increase with well designed components.
– Development becomes faster, because we can rely on proven components instead of reinventing everything.

Small Things Matter
The UI renewal isn’t just about big architectural changes it’s also about small insights that make development and usage smoother. I’m especially proud of improvements to the architecture that make other developers’ work easier. For example, opening Drawer windows now takes just a single line of code, which saves time and makes implementations clearer.
When you invest in details, you create solutions that benefit both users and developers.

Testing Is Continuous
We never build blindly. Every line of code is covered by unit tests to ensure new changes don’t break existing functionality. Accessibility is reviewed using automated tools, and manually for example, with screen readers.
We also take part in user testing sessions run by UX designers, where we can directly observe how our solutions work in real customer workflows. This feedback is invaluable.

AI as a Daily Partner for Developers
AI is here to stay in software development, and it already plays a significant role in our work. AI speeds up development by generating unit tests, optimizing manually written code, and acting as a code reviewer. It catches details that might escape the human eye. It can also generate code for well defined use cases, provided you know how to prompt it effectively.

A Team of Experienced Experts and New Talent
Three teams are working on the UI renewal: one focused on the design system and two on the UI itself. Each UI team includes one UX designer and five to six developers. The mix of experienced professionals and rising talents creates a strong balance.
One moment I’m particularly proud of was when our team released the first version of time tracking for beta users. That was the moment we saw our work turn into something that created real value in customers’ daily routines.
Since then, we’ve released multiple improvements based on user feedback. Still, I’m perhaps most proud that, since the summer, we’ve significantly increased Beta usage through these small but meaningful improvements.

At the Heart of It All: Customer Value
Technology, testing, AI, and attention to detail these are all ways to a single goal: making Severa a better tool for our customers.
This renewal is a journey we take together with our users. Feedback and testing from beta customers have played a critical role and continue to steer us forward.

Juhana Repo is a Senior Software Developer and team lead at Severa. He specializes in frontend development and is one of the key contributors to the user interface renewal. He is especially motivated by architecture development and solutions that make life easier for both customers and fellow developers.