From consultant tools
to customer experiences.
Korn Ferry's Talent Suite is used by Fortune 500 HR teams to run leadership assessments, development programs, and compensation analysis at scale. Over two years I led a mix of shipped products, strategic discovery programs, and organizational initiatives that helped shift the platform from consultant-centered workflows toward customer-centered experiences.
I partnered directly with the Chief Product Officer and Head of Design on product direction. I created the Design Guild the team still uses today. I was the first on the team to introduce AI-assisted concept generation into research workflows — and later hosted knowledge-sharing sessions that expanded the practice across the organization. I led bi-monthly enterprise client sessions, facilitated cross-functional alignment that PMs couldn't achieve on their own, and coached designers on building a strong design organization.
Beyond the initiatives below, I led design across Talent Suite's full membership surface — onboarding, authentication, account management, and access controls across markets. I also led boots-on-the-ground user research, conducted field sessions directly with clients, and facilitated design thinking workshops to align product vision across business units.
Built for consultants.
Needed for customers.
In 2023, Talent Suite hit an adoption wall. A major assessment onboarding initiative failed to gain traction. The root cause was structural: the product had been built for Korn Ferry consultants who run assessments professionally — not for the HR managers at client companies who set one up once a year.
Every screen assumed expert mental models. Every configuration option was surfaced upfront. The learning curve was too steep and users dropped off before completing setup.
Eric, Head of Design, recognized this wasn't a UX problem on one screen — it was a product philosophy problem across the entire suite. He pulled me in to help lead the response. Multi-Program became the primary vehicle for that transformation, and Manager Experience extended it into entirely new strategic territory.
Unifying Assessments, Coaching, and Learning
Unifying assessments, coaching, learning, and reports into a single coherent participant journey — so people could focus on growing, not navigating.
Programs did not exist as a standalone concept within Korn Ferry's ecosystem. Participants navigated separate assessment, coaching, and learning products independently — with no coherent sense of where they were in their overall development journey. The experience had been designed around system architecture, not around how people actually move through a program.
I structured a four-round research program — eight HR-adjacent participants each, recruited via recruitment software. Between rounds I used AI to rapidly generate alternative concept directions. I was the first on the team to work this way, and it compressed iteration cycles significantly, enabling broader design divergence before convergence. Each round tested a new direction. Findings fed directly into the next.
I then hosted a UX outcomes workshop — mapping research findings to shared UX outcomes — to create alignment between design, product, and engineering before any screen was finalized.
I was teased that I was the best facilitator for getting PMs to talk to each other. That's not a personality trait — it's a strategic capability. Many of the most important outcomes here came from creating clarity before design work even began.
As implementation planning began, the challenge shifted from designing the experience to determining what could realistically be delivered. I facilitated recurring workshops with PMs, Engineering, Platform, Assessment, Coaching, and Learning teams — reviewing concepts screen by screen and categorizing ideas together.
Feasible for MVP
Needs research or sizing
Stretch / future
Out of scope
Creating a unified program experience — a central hub surfacing the most important next action, connecting assessments, coaching, and learning into a single journey.
Progress tracking required defining what "done" meant — shifting the conversation from UI design to product definition.
From task list to recommendation model — surfacing the most impactful next action, not just a queue.
A scalable framework accommodating assessments, learning modules, coaching, and required milestones within a single journey.
Balancing required milestones, time-sensitive actions, and optional content without overwhelming participants.
Cross-product alignment. Shared decision-making. A foundation for future program experiences. An MVP that balanced participant value with engineering realities — and a UX outcomes workshop model that became the standard for how subsequent projects were kicked off.
After MVP delivery, I continued exploring what the experience could become if technical constraints were removed. The interactive prototype below shows the consumer-friendly direction — what it looks like when a participant experience feels like a well-designed app, not an enterprise dashboard.
An interactive prototype exploring the consumer-friendly direction is featured below — showing how the participant journey could evolve beyond MVP constraints.
See the full concept →Helping Managers Take Meaningful Action
Helping managers take meaningful action — from "we think managers should have access to assessment data" to a validated opportunity space, research-backed direction, and executive alignment.
Stacie Overbaugh, Chief Product Officer for Korn Ferry Digital, identified a strategic opportunity. Managers were expected to monitor participant progress across assessments, coaching, learning, and program milestones — but visibility and workflows varied significantly. Rather than immediately designing a solution, the project began with discovery.
- Desk research and competitive analysis
- Review of existing manager reports and analytics
- Stakeholder interviews
- Manager interviews — four rounds, eight participants each
- Analysis of current workflows across products
Managers weren't failing to engage with data because they didn't care. They were failing because they had no trusted, low-friction way to access it at the moment they needed it — right before a 1:1, right before a performance conversation. They didn't want another dashboard. They needed clarity on who needs attention, what requires action, and what's progressing well.
Reporting-focused experience
✓ Comprehensive visibility
✗ High cognitive load and information density
Participant health overview
✓ Quick prioritization
✗ Limited context and guidance
Guided manager workflow
✓ Action-oriented, easier to navigate
✗ Required stronger workflow definitions
Managers responded most positively to experiences that emphasized action over reporting. The direction evolved toward a lightweight workflow helping managers identify participants requiring attention, understand recommended actions, and access supporting information when needed. This shifted the conversation from information presentation to decision support.
Strategic clarity. A validated opportunity space, concept directions with user evidence, and a documented set of product decisions the organization needed to make before building responsibly. Executive alignment before a single engineering estimate was written.
Push for MVP definition as a parallel workstream from the start. The research was strong but the handoff to engineering was delayed by unresolved product decisions that could have been surfaced earlier.
The research validated the direction but the build didn't happen within the engagement. I continued exploring what the manager experience could become — prototyping a consumer-grade companion that extends the same philosophy as the participant experience (Today / Team / Coach) to the manager's lens: not a dashboard of reports and completion rates, but a calm, intelligent tool built around the manager's actual rhythm.
This reframe was validated in a conversation with my own manager at the time, who described wanting exactly this — a single place to prepare for 1:1s, development conversations, and performance reviews, rather than piecing together information from separate HR systems before each meeting. The product already had the data. What it lacked was a surface built for the manager's rhythm.
The manager experience uses the same three-surface model (Today / Team / Coach) and identical visual system as the participant prototype — same ivory background, same forest green accent, same "one thing matters most" hero pattern. The unit of synthesis shifts from "what am I learning about myself" to "what is my team revealing." The AI coach's voice shifts from personal guidance to team intelligence.
- Today — one AI-synthesized priority, a team signal, team member tiles at a glance, and a "This Week" schedule (1:1s, anniversaries, PTO) with "prep ready →" linking into Coach
- Team — cross-team patterns, then each report expandable into three layers: who they are, where they are right now, and what's coming up
- Coach — a present-tense working session preparing Julian for a 1:1, development conversation, or review — with a lightweight commitment plan saved to the report's record
Responsive across desktop and mobile — designed to be opened between meetings, not just at a desk.
Explore the manager prototype →
One AI-suggested action, a quiet team signal, team tiles at a glance, and a "This Week" list — 1:1s, anniversaries, PTO, with "prep ready →" when a Coach session is ready.
Cross-team patterns at the top, each report expandable into who they are (working style, themes), where they are right now (program evidence, last reflection), and what's coming up.
What's been happening, conversation starters grounded in Sarah's actual themes, and a lightweight commitment plan saved to her record after the conversation.
Bottom tab navigation, full-width coach card, horizontal team scroll — genuinely useful on a phone between meetings.
Making Pay Equity Easier to Understand
Making pay equity easier to understand — and act on. A net-new product designed from the ground up that became one of the most visible offerings in the Talent Suite portfolio.
Enterprise HR leaders don't just need data. They need a clear path from insight to action. Most pay equity tools show you the problem. Ours needed to show you what to do about it.
The core dashboard experience showing pay gap analysis by role, department, gender, and ethnicity — with actionable recommendations surfaced inline. The workflow for compensation managers to model remediation strategies, identify affected employees, estimate adjustment costs, and evaluate approaches for closing gaps. Audit-ready reporting built into the output.
The first version was still too analyst-facing. An earlier round of research with HR generalists — not just compensation specialists — would have changed some information hierarchy decisions.
Surfacing gender and ethnicity pay gaps, adjusted and unadjusted disparities, workforce distribution, and statistically significant findings across the organization.
Moving from insight to action — modeling remediation strategies, identifying affected employees, and estimating adjustment costs to close pay gaps.
Reducing Complexity in Assessment Setup
Reducing complexity in assessment setup — and the project I'm most honest about in interviews, because it's the one that changed the direction of everything.
Product pushed to reuse the existing enterprise campaign setup process and update the designs rather than rethink the flow. Instead of letting regular clients configure a program in three steps with templates, we front-loaded every customization option. The learning curve was too steep. Users dropped off.
Usability reviews and cross-functional discussions surfaced recurring themes. Campaign creation appeared to be five steps but contained multiple nested configuration screens. Administrators were required to make detailed decisions before understanding their consequences. Terms like "workflows," "solutions," and "modules" reflected internal system architecture — not how HR teams think.
The real outcome wasn't failure — it was clarity. The product had been built for experts. The adoption data made that undeniable. Eric used it as the inflection point to bring me in to lead the customer-facing transformation.
- Reframe setup around goals and templates, not technical configuration
- Introduce smart defaults — launch quickly, customize later
- Progressive disclosure — surface advanced options only when needed
- Replace internal terminology with language HR teams actually use
- Show concise summaries first; let users expand into detail
A design system migration is the best time to rethink the flow entirely. I should have made that case more forcefully from the start. I keep coming back to this one.
A template-first approach reframing campaign creation around common HR goals — 360 Feedback, Self-Assessment, Leadership Readiness — instead of technical configuration. Start with intent, not architecture.
Standard settings surfaced by default. Advanced options preserved but deferred. Clarity and confidence before generation — not configuration for its own sake.
Reimagining the Participant Experience
A speculative redesign of Talent Suite's participant home — exploring what the experience could become if it were built around synthesis, not tasks.
Participants enrolled in multiple leadership programs — Executive Acceleration, People Leader Development, Emerging Leaders — had no sense of orientation. The experience was a flat list of tasks across programs, with no answer to the questions that actually matter: where am I in my growth, what deserves my attention right now, and what am I learning about myself along the way.
Talent Suite's real differentiator isn't content delivery — it's synthesis. The product already collects 360 feedback, coaching notes, and assessment data across programs. What it wasn't doing was connecting them into a single, evolving picture of how someone leads. I redesigned the participant experience around that idea, restructuring it into three calm surfaces:
- Home — one AI-synthesized priority for today, framed as coaching guidance rather than a task list
- Growth — cross-program patterns ("what your work is revealing"), plus every program — active and completed — with finished programs becoming a personal growth dossier rather than disappearing
- Coach — a present-tense workspace for the synthesis work itself, like clustering 360 feedback into themes before a coaching session
The goal was a product an executive would feel coached by, not evaluated by — closer to Calm or Headspace than to a traditional HR dashboard. Restraint did most of the work: one priority per day, two or three programs at a glance, patterns surfaced quietly rather than scored.
Before this vision concept, Talent Suite's design direction was built primarily around org-level analytics and HR-buyer dashboards — dense data tools for administrators, not the people going through programs. These screens from an internal board presentation show the existing aesthetic and product frame: Talent Analytics with donut charts and gridlines, a Coaching concept still relying on a chatbot panel and task cards, and an Evaluating Leadership dashboard whose name alone signals the emotional register the vision prototype explicitly reframes away from.
Analytics-first, HR-buyer-oriented — donut charts, multi-chart dashboards, dense data for org-level decision-making. The product's existing visual language.
"Evaluating" — the word itself names what the vision prototype reframes. This screen measures and scores leadership; the reframe helps people understand and develop it.
An earlier participant-facing concept — the right instincts (personal greeting, progress journey, AI coach) but AI still surfaced as a chatbot panel rather than an ambient voice woven through the experience.
A parallel AI exploration — Copilot surfacing development context during live coaching sessions. Reactive and on-demand, vs. the vision prototype's proactive synthesis model.
Built and prototyped end-to-end in Lovable, including a responsive mobile experience.
Explore the participant prototype →
A single AI-synthesized priority, framed as coaching guidance — with active programs shown at a glance, no percentages or task counts competing for attention.
Cross-program strengths and growth edges, plus active and completed programs — completed programs collapse into a personal growth dossier.
Clustering 360 feedback into themes ahead of a coaching session, with the AI coach working alongside her as a collaborator rather than issuing directives.
Some of my most meaningful
contributions weren't screens.
Created and facilitated a Design Guild — still running today — bringing together approximately 12 designers for critique, reviews, knowledge sharing, and quality alignment across the organization.
Became the person teams went to when PMs, researchers, and designers couldn't align or move a conversation forward. "The best facilitator for getting PMs to talk to each other" — a strategic capability, not a personality trait.
First on the team to introduce AI-assisted concept generation into research workflows. Later hosted recurring knowledge-sharing sessions that expanded the practice across the design organization.
Led bi-monthly enterprise client sessions — gathering direct feedback from Fortune 500 HR leaders and translating it into UX outcomes that shaped the roadmap.
Used as the standard kickoff method for the highest-visibility, highest-revenue initiatives I was assigned to — creating shared understanding before design work began.
Coached designers on building a strong design organization and design leadership practices. Received Exceeds Expectations from both the VP and Sr. Director when the engagement ended due to company restructuring.
Korn Ferry reinforced
something I keep coming back to.
The most important design work isn't on screens
The Guilds, the PM facilitation, the client meetings, the design reviews — these shaped how a team thinks and works. That influence outlasts any single product decision.
Failure is a design brief
The assessment adoption failure wasn't a setback — it was the clearest possible statement of what the product needed to become. The best brief I ever received was the one nobody wrote down.
Ambiguity is a senior skill
The Manager Experience started with nothing. Turning nothing into a structured product conversation is what principal designers do. The hardest product problems are alignment problems, definition problems, and trust problems — not interface problems.