Merify
Merify is a skills-focused SaaS platform for performance management.
As the only designer on-staff at Merify I was involved with all levels and layers of the startup life cycle. My main areas of focus were Product and Brand design. Projects of note included Brand videos, How-to videos, designing our mascot: Irma C. Otter (they, them pronouns) and most importantly, solving complex UX design problems to give life to a novel peer review process.
New process and new problems
At the heart of Merify is a patented peer review process where users rate each other in skills that they’ve used while working together. They might be tactical like a programming language or soft skills like collaboration. Bringing this process to life presented several complex UX challenges.
Keeping Score
While similar to other rating systems, there were some tasks and factors that required us to design a unique solution for this process. To gain insights into the experience of the scoring process we created a paper version of the process. This also allowed for much more flexibility during focus groups. We received great feedback which led us to a visually engaging design for the rating widget initially.
Scoring Widget v2
After several prototypes and close collaboration with the dev team; we landed on a simplified design that would be easier to develop but still had some visual interest and engagement.
Scoring Widget v3
Following user feedback and our own drive to make the process as fast and easy as possible we further refined scoring. This also provided a compact and fast solution to related user tasks such as adding a skill to an existing review.
