Industry

Human resources planning

Timeline

2025.4 - 8

Category

SaaS, B2B

Performance management platform optimization

Performance management platform optimization

Performance management platform optimization

Overview

Overview

As a product designer for a performance management system,I led the end-to-end design process — from conducting user interviews and facilitating ideation workshops, to framing the problem space, defining design strategies, and delivering tested design solutions.

1

Timeline

20 weeks (10 sprints)

2

The Team

Designer, PM*2, BA, GGM, Engineers*5

3

My Role

Product designer

Problem

Problem

Users Can’t Track— Lack of Visibility & Alignment

Users struggle to track their goal progress and how their work aligns with team or organisational priorities, as progress indicators are unclear and scattered.

Users Don’t Trust— Disconnected Conversations

Users struggle to use the Conversations module because it feels disconnected, adds little value, and is difficult to access.

Results after 10+ sprints

Results after 10+ sprints

60% ⬇️

60% ⬇️

Completion time

Completion time

13% ⬆️

13% ⬆️

CSAT score

CSAT score

25% ⬆️

25% ⬆️

Usage

Usage

Prototype

Prototype

Process

Design fast, test fast, iterate fast in a rapid agile environment.

1

Identifying Structural Gaps

Identified goal-tracking gaps as the root issue and delivered small UX improvements for fast impact.

2

Reshaping the Experience

Validated insights with users and pivoted the release from dashboards to structured goal tracking.

3

Proving It Works

Iterated with users, improving clarity, adoption, and CSAT.

Research+ Insight Synthesis

  • Combining the insights from both the UK and Aus market

  • Conduct a UX review, transferring 18 interviews to 225 insights & 18 problem statements

Auditing the Existing Experience

I reviewed existing flows across:

  • Goal creation and updates

  • Manager approvals

  • Review and appraisal stages

This surfaced patterns where users stalled, backtracked, or abandoned tasks.

Quick Wins

Simplified the review and appraisal workflow with clear visual indicators to highlight goal adjustments. Reducing performance plan approval completion time by ~60%.

Simplified the review and appraisal workflow with clear visual indicators to highlight goal adjustments. Reducing performance plan approval completion time by ~60%.

Reframe goal tracking experience

Interviews revealed that users did not find percentage completion meaningful. In response, I redesigned both the UI and the goal-tracking approach to surface progress through activity, context, and ongoing effort—aligning the experience with how users naturally talked about their work.

Iterative Validation

We explored both sub-goals and action items as ways to break down goals — I proposed a sub-goal structure, while the PM suggested an action-item approach.

Through validation with users, we saw distinct use cases for each, so we decided to ship both to support different planning and execution needs.


MVP first, future-ready

To address the lack of value and connectivity in the Conversations module, I redesigned the communication experience for MVP to better integrate with goals and performance, while also defining a future-phase comment model to support more continuous and contextual feedback.

Full Deck

Full Deck

Curious about the twists and behind-the-scenes stories from development? I’d love to share more in my case study presentation.

Full deck
Full deck

Next Project

Next Project

Process

Design fast, test fast, iterate fast in a rapid agile environment.

1

Discover + Quick Wins

Identified goal-tracking gaps as the root issue and delivered small UX improvements for fast impact.

2

Interview + Pivot Solutions

Validated insights with users and pivoted the release from dashboards to structured goal tracking.

3

Validate + Iterate

Iterated with users, improving clarity, adoption, and CSAT.

Discover from data

  • Combining the insights from both the UK and Aus market

  • Conduct a UX review, transferring 18 interviews to 225 insights & 18 problem statements

Quick Wins

Simplified the review and appraisal workflow with clear visual indicators to highlight goal adjustments. Reducing performance plan approval completion time by ~60%.

Reframe goal tracking experience

Interviews revealed that users did not find percentage completion meaningful. In response, I redesigned both the UI and the goal-tracking approach to surface progress through activity, context, and ongoing effort—aligning the experience with how users naturally talked about their work.

Iterative Validation

We explored both sub-goals and action items as ways to break down goals — I proposed a sub-goal structure, while the PM suggested an action-item approach.

Through validation with users, we saw distinct use cases for each, so we decided to ship both to support different planning and execution needs.

MVP first, future-ready

To address the lack of value and connectivity in the Conversations module, I redesigned the communication experience for MVP to better integrate with goals and performance, while also defining a future-phase comment model to support more continuous and contextual feedback.