344 screens
designed — the complete system, end to end
Enterprise OKR Platform · Under NDA
Objectives that add up — from one employee's week to the whole company's year.
OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — are how a company writes down what it wants to achieve (the objective) and the numbers that will prove it happened (the key results). Most companies in India were running theirs in spreadsheets — and finding out how the quarter went only once it was over.
I designed a four-level goal-setting platform where every level's goals visibly add up to the level above, progress shows while there is still time to act, and four very different people each get the view they can actually use.
4 levels
organisation, department, team, individual — one aligned tree
~3 wks
from a two-day visual pass to end-to-end system design, alongside development
Shipped
and when later rebuilt with a new engineering team, the design logic was carried forward
Four people carry this story — a chief executive, a department head, a team lead and a salesman. They ride along in the rail on the right — and the Glossary button beneath them holds every term this system is built on: objective, key result, initiative, BAU, check-in, CP and IKR.
Organisation
Departments
Teams
Individuals
Everything in this company gets filed — watch for the office folders as you scroll.
Recreated for this case study — you are looking at the CEO's organisation-level workspace: put yourself in her shoes. Six screens, simplified — and the menu bar actually navigates
Search objectives and key results
Lily Joseph
Hi, Lily!CEOAnnual score · 4.5
How the company is doing at a glance — and what needs your attention.
3Departments
12OKR sets
71/80Check-ins done
4.4OKR score
Check-ins this quarter
Check-ins
71 completed · 9 missed
71 completed · 9 missed
71/80filed on time · 9 missed
Initiatives by status
Contribution by department
Contribution by department
Production 40% · Sales 35% · HR 25%
Production 40% · Sales 35% · HR 25%
hover for the split
Notifications
New department-level OKR submissions. Time to approve or reject what has come up. Review
Karthik Gowda (Field Sales) has been awarded for exceptional work this quarter. See why
Organisation OKRs
Where you write down an organisation-level goal — the objective, the numbers that will prove it (key results), and the work planned to move it (initiatives).
ORG-O1Improve sales vs. previous financial year1 KR1 initiative90%v1
Key results
| KR No. | Key result | Start value | Criteria / KPI | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1-KR1 | Increase sales from ₹75L to 1.5cr | 75,00,000 | 1,50,00,000 | Rahul | 90% |
Initiatives
| I. No. | Initiative | Mapped KR | Type | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1-I1 | Hire a minimum of 5 support & sales staff | O1-KR1 | Current-Quarter | Neha | Completed |
Save OKRCancel
Approve / reject OKRs
Nothing counts until it is agreed — objective proposals from the different departments are approved here, or returned with a reason.
D-SAL-O1Grow sales revenue for the departmentv2 · Editraised by Rahul
Aligned to ORG-O1 · ORG-O1-KR1 · owns 60%
| KR No. | Key result | Start value | Criteria / KPI | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-O1-KR1 | Grow average order value in the field | 18,000 | 26,000 | Neha |
Note · Version 2 — resubmitted with a second key result split out, as requested.
ApproveRejectReason for rejection — required
Checkins
The weekly pulse — update the status of your objective for the week, choosing from the options right on the table.
ORG-O1Improve sales vs. previous financial year1 KR1 initiative90%
| I. No. | Initiative | Mapped KR | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1-I1 | Hire a minimum of 5 support & sales staff | O1-KR1 | Neha | On Track |
Status
Not StartedOn TrackAt RiskDelayedDroppedMoved to next quarterCompleted
Notes
Interviews scheduled for the last two roles…
The check-in is the table itself — pick a status, add a note if there is one. Nothing else to fill.
Reports
The roll-up — how each department’s progress adds up into your organisation’s number.
Improve sales vs. previous financial year ▾
| Department · team · person | Objective | Aligned to | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Improve sales vs. previous financial year | ORG-O1-KR1 · 60% | Moonshot 🎉Exceptional performance — above 100% of target. |
| Field SalesA team, within the Sales department | Grow average order value in the field | D-SAL-O1-KR1 · 60% | 82% |
| KarthikA person, in the Field Sales team | CP1 · Invest in co-ordination tools | T-FS-O1-KR1 | 60% |
| HR | Recruit high-quality employees | ORG-O1-KR2 · 40% | 100% |
| HiringA team, within the HR department | Close every open role by November | D-HR-O1-KR1 · 100% | 100% |
| Organisation objective progress | 90% | ||
Performance management
Quarter end — score each department: computed from its OKRs and check-ins, plus a bonus you award on top.
| Department | Lead | OKRs | Check-ins | Missed | OKR score | Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Rahul | 10 | 16 / 20 | 4 | 4.0 | Enter score |
| Production | Srinidhi | 5 | 20 / 20 | 0 | 5.0 | Enter score |
| HR | Anita | 3 | 17 / 20 | 3 | 4.25 | Enter score |
Submit
Act I The situation
Most organisations were running their objectives in a spreadsheet.
An objective is what you are trying to achieve; a key result is how you will know you got there. The method is decades old — but in 2021, when this project ran, the tooling, while it existed, wasn’t nuanced enough to support varying company dynamics.
Surveys put spreadsheet-first OKR tracking at roughly two-thirds of organisations, with most adopters admitting they had not mastered the process [1–3] — and India, this product's first market, was adopting fastest and stumbling just as often [4–5].
Before — the spreadsheet
| Goal | Owner | Aligned to | Wk 1 | Wk 2 | Wk 3 | Wk 4 | Wk 5 | Wk 6 | Wk 7 | Wk 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improve sales vs. last year | Rahul | — | 75L | 78L | — | 84L | 88L | — | — | 96L |
| Increase up-sells | Priya | Sales obj (?) | 2% | — | 5% | — | — | 9% | — | 11% |
| Hire 5 sales staff | Srinidhi | above | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | — | 2 | 2 | — |
| Improve quality | Radha | — | — | ok | — | — | late | — | — | ? |
| Recruit better people | Lily | Q. obj | — | — | — | yes | — | — | — | — |
The file Lily inherited every quarter — a reconstruction, not a client file; a column per week, alignment typed in by hand
After — the same objectives, in the system
ORG-O1Improve sales vs. previous financial year90%v1
| Department · team · person | Objective | Aligned to | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Improve sales vs. previous financial year | ORG-O1-KR1 · 60% | Moonshot 🎉Exceptional performance — above 100% of target. |
| Field SalesA team, within the Sales department | Grow average order value in the field | D-SAL-O1-KR1 · 60% | 82% |
| KarthikA person, in the Field Sales team | CP1 · Invest in co-ordination tools | T-FS-O1-KR1 | 60% |
| HR | Recruit high-quality employees | ORG-O1-KR2 · 40% | 100% |
| HiringA team, within the HR department | Close every open role by November | D-HR-O1-KR1 · 100% | 100% |
| Organisation objective progress | 90% | ||
Same objectives, one surface — press − / + to open a department into its teams, and a team into its people; every row declares what it is aligned to, and the number rolls back up
Issues with the Excel
01
Alignment is a claim, not a link
A cell can say "supports the sales objective." Nothing checks that it does, and nothing calculates what it contributed.
02
No record of what changed, or why
Targets can be edited by anyone holding the file. A missed objective can quietly become a met one.
03
Progress arrives too late to act on
There is no sense of whether the pace is fast enough with six weeks still to run.
04
Everyone sees the same file
A CEO and a team lead need very different things from it — and a spreadsheet offers one view to both.
The client
A veteran practitioner who had spent over a decade helping large organisations — including public-sector bodies — run their goal-setting. She had built these spreadsheets herself, refined them across hundreds of engagements, and trained internal teams to keep them running after she left.
She wanted to build the tool she had been working around. Two things were missing from the products on the market: customisation deep enough to match how a specific organisation operates, and proper support for objectives people set for themselves.
Client’s intention · 01
Part of the week's rhythm — never a chore on top of it. The system had to slot into how people already work; check-ins, above all, had to cost almost nothing.
Client’s intention · 02
A shared language the whole company thinks in. Planning meetings framed as objectives, key results and initiatives — every level walking out able to write its own.
Act I The research
I could not talk to users. So I learned the domain from someone who had spent fourteen years in it.
Research · one expert source, triangulated three ways
The rules of this domain genuinely lived in one head.
Recurring sessions with the client. One-to-one time instead of second-hand requirements — five review rounds across three weeks.
Her published teaching material. Her book and tutorials, worked through before sessions — so I arrived with questions, not blanks.
Competitor teardowns. I worked through the goal-setting products on the market — a baseline for conventions, and the gaps she wanted closed.
What this could not give me. No contact with daily users — every need reached me through one person, however expert. I come back to this at the end.
Finding 1
Hierarchy is the product
“Nothing counts until the level above agrees.”Most organisations have at least four levels — organisation, department, team, and individual — or some version of this. And objectives do not simply exist at those levels. Each level must ask permission from the level above before its objectives count. The reporting line is not context around the feature — it is the feature.
Finding 2
The market tracked goals, not work
“Every tool assumed your week is made of objectives.”A competitor scan — profit.co among the tools explored — showed 2021’s OKR products modelled only the aspirational layer. Their own positioning framed daily routine work as noise to align away, not something the system should hold — the gap this product’s individual level was built to fill.
Finding 3
A real week is mostly routine — not goals
“People abandon tools that ignore the real week.”OKRs capture the ambitious goals — but most of anyone’s actual week is recurring work: pipeline reviews, reports, upkeep. Tools that tracked only goals made the real week invisible, and people abandoned them. So routine work got first-class status here: the BAU. Recurring work needed first-class status.
As heard across five review rounds with the client — paraphrased, like everything on this page
Act I The tension & the reframe
One product. Four people who need completely different things from the same data.
The spreadsheet offered one view of the company. Research described four people — different questions, different permissions, different portions of the tree. Meet them once; they carry the rest of this story. (New to the vocabulary? The Glossary lives in the rail on the right.)
CEO
Organisation
Organisation
Is the company going to make it?
Wants three departments on one screen, and to know which is dragging. Never opens an individual's tasks.
Department head
Sales
Sales
Which team needs me this week?
Approves what his teams submit, then answers upward for whatever they deliver.
Team lead
Field Sales
Field Sales
Is anyone on my team stuck?
The only person who sees both the objective and the human doing it.
Individual
Sales rep
Sales rep
What am I meant to do this week?
Wants his own handful of priorities and duties — and to see the work connects to something.
The product was never one tool. It is one tree, seen from four heights.
How might we
…let every level set objectives that add up — and give each person only the view they can act on?
Act I The solution
Two solutions: one flow for everyone — vs four flows, talking to each other?
A first solution already existed when I arrived: a deck of roughly thirty wireframes assembled in Canva, which I was given two days to render in Figma. It mapped one straight path for one kind of user — as if a four-level company were a single person. The system I designed instead starts from the four people above, and their four questions.
Solution 130 screens
One lane, no roles
Create objective↓Add key results↓Check in↓Dashboard↓Report
Solution 2: the shipped system344 screens
Four lanes, talking to each other
CreateSubmitDecideCheck inAdds up
Every Submit ↑ is a proposal of an objective to the level above; every Approve / reject ↓ is a decision with a reason; every check-in rolls back up as the number Lily watches over different components of her organisation.
What the shipped system did that the single flow never considered
Governance, built in. Approvals, rejections with reasons, and versions — nothing counts until the level above agrees.
Role-based permissions. A recruiter and a CEO see two different systems, not one shared file.
Hierarchy modelled honestly. Roles, designations and levels treated as three different things — because they are.
Room for mistakes. Edit, delete, undo, restore and version history, for every object.
Levels that talk. Every objective knows its parent, its owner, and its share — and the number rolls back up.
Four personas, four views. Each person’s screen starts from their guiding question — not from a shared template.
Act II The system
Everything below is recreated — the real screens and palette stay behind the NDA. The structure and the logic are the design as shipped.
01
Everyone sets objectives. Each one has to add up to the one above it.
From Karthik's week to Lily's year: Lily thinks in an organisation OKR, Rahul in a department OKR, Neha in a team OKR, Karthik in his own IKR. The spreadsheet could hold every number. What it could not hold was the relationship between them.
Every object declares the parent it supports — an objective and one of its key results — and the percentage of that parent it owns. Alignment stops being a typed sentence and becomes arithmetic. Each object also carries a readable address: D-SAL-O1-KR1 names the level, unit, objective and key result before you read a word.
“This year, we improve sales — ₹75 lakhs to ₹1.5 crores by December.”
ORG-O1 · Lily Joseph, chief executive
ORG-O1Improve sales vs. previous financial yearSales 60%HR 40%90%v1
Key results
| KR No. | Key result | Start value | Criteria / KPI | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1-KR1 | Increase sales from ₹75L to 1.5cr | 75,00,000 | 1,50,00,000 | Rahul | 90% |
Initiatives
| I. No. | Initiative | Mapped KR | Type | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1-I1 | Hire a minimum of 5 support & sales staff | O1-KR1 | Current-Quarter | Neha | Completed |
“Then Sales carries its 60% of that.”
D-SAL-O1 · Rahul, department head, Sales
D-SAL-O1Grow sales revenue for the departmentaligned to ORG-O1 · ORG-O1-KR1 · owns 60%Field Sales 60%Inside Sales 40%Moonshot 🎉Exceptional performance — above 100% of target.v2
Key results
| KR No. | Key result | Start value | Criteria / KPI | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-O1-KR1 | Grow average order value in the field | 18,000 | 26,000 | Neha | 82% |
Initiatives
| I. No. | Initiative | Mapped KR | Type | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-O1-I1 | Roll out the new pricing sheet to every rep | D-O1-KR1 | Current-Quarter | Neha | Completed |
“My team’s share, split across my people.”
T-FS-O1 · Neha, team lead, Field Sales
T-FS-O1Grow average order value in the fieldaligned to D-SAL-O1 · D-SAL-O1-KR1 · owns 60%Karthik 40%Beena 35%Dev 25%82%v1
Key results
| KR No. | Key result | Start value | Criteria / KPI | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T-O1-KR1 | Average order above ₹26,000 | 18,000 | 26,000 | Karthik | 82% |
Initiatives
| I. No. | Initiative | Mapped KR | Type | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T-O1-I1 | Shadow calls with the two newest reps | T-O1-KR1 | Current-Quarter | Neha | Completed |
“So my Monday actually moves the December number.”
IKR · Karthik Gowda, sales rep, Field Sales
IKRKarthik’s individual key resultsaligned to T-FS-O1 · submitted to Neha · approved55%v1
Critical priorities · CPs
| CP No. | Critical priority | Aligned to | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| CP1 | Invest in department co-ordination tools | T-FS-O1-KR1 | 60% |
| CP2 | Deal turnaround under 3 weeks | T-FS-O1-KR2 | 45% |
Routine duties · BAUs
| BAU No. | BAU | Frequency | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| BAU1 | Pipeline review | Weekly · Mondays | Completed |
Each level’s set in the product — the organisation’s objective defined by Lily; the department’s aligned to an existing organisation objective; the team’s aligned to the department’s; and Karthik’s IKR — CPs and BAUs, not KRs and initiatives — aligned to the team’s · When he files his check-in, the number travels back up this chain, weighted at every hop
Objectives are not published downward. They are proposed upward and agreed — Karthik to Neha, Neha to Rahul, Rahul to Lily. Nothing counts until the level above accepts it. Here is the unhappy path, the one nobody wireframes:
“T-FS-O1 — grow average order value, carrying 60% of D-SAL-O1-KR1.”
Status: Pending · version 1
“The split ignores Inside Sales — rework the contribution and resubmit.”
Status: Rejected · the reason travels with the objective
“Version 2 — Field Sales at 50%, history carried forward.”
Status: Approved · every version stores its reason
The approval chain · four states
03 · ReturnedReason travels with itRejection sits inline with the objective it belongs to. Resubmit carries history forward as version 2.Rejected
04 · LockedEdits become requestsAfter approval, changes need a stated reason and fresh sign-off. Every version stores that reason.Approved
In the spreadsheet, sign-off lived in an email thread and a filename — OKRs_Q4_master_v3_FINAL.xlsx was the audit trail. The lock makes the system slightly less convenient and considerably more honest
Objectives declare intent once a quarter; it is the check-ins that keep the whole system alive — so they were designed to cost almost nothing: no separate form, no report to write. The check-in is the table the person already works in — a status picked from seven, a note if there is one. Part of the week's rhythm, never a chore on top of it.
Lily's check-in · it is the table itself
ORG-O1Improve sales vs. previous financial year1 initiative due
| I. No. | Initiative | Mapped KR | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1-I1 | Hire a minimum of 5 support & sales staff | O1-KR1 | Neha | On Track |
Status
Not StartedOn TrackAt RiskDelayedDroppedMoved to next quarterCompleted
Notes · optional
Interviews scheduled for the last two roles…
One status from seven, an optional note, directly on the row — the same pattern at every level, on that level's schedule
02
Knowing where you stand, before the quarter is over.
A spreadsheet records the target and the final number — not the trajectory between them, while there is still time to act. The check-in, filed routinely by every member, is what draws that trajectory and keeps the whole system alive.
Each level sets its own check-in frequency, and the platform asks only for what is due. One check-in form would have been wrong — asking “what percentage complete?” about Lily's recurring Monday review produces a meaningless number. So the input changes with the object — and below, with the person filing it.
Three shapes of answer — matched to the work, not the person
Numerical
for key results
43,00,000
Enter your notes
Status
for initiatives & routine duties
Not StartedOn TrackAt RiskDelayedCompleted
Enter your notes
Plan · Progress · Problem
for critical priorities
Plan — shortlist three vendors
Progress — two shortlisted
Problem — awaiting sign-off
At individual level Karthik's check-in asks for plan, progress, problem — and then one field that changes its character entirely: Seek help from, naming a specific colleague. A status update becomes a routed request.
Karthik's Monday check-in · CP1 · recreated
Value — 40%
Plan — Shortlist three vendors and get pricing.
Progress — Two shortlisted; the third has not replied.
Problem — Cannot compare without procurement sign-off.
Seek help from — Beena Ram · Associate, Field Sales
Submitted to Neha's team view — and routed to Beena's notifications
Why the field existsPeople miss objectives because they get stuck and do not escalate. Naming a colleague turns a bad number into a request someone can answer.
And the loop closesIn performance management, help requests raised and tasks supported are columns beside the score. Helping a colleague is measured work — which is what makes it safe to ask.
The only part of the system that tries to change the outcome rather than measure it
Knowing you are at 50% is useless without knowing where 50% should have been. Every level sees this same chart for its own objectives: progress against a diagonal for the pace that lands on target, with a plain-language verdict — so a reader scanning fourteen objectives does not have to interpret a graph.
Objective chart · progress against ideal pace
Objective 1Above the line. On track to be achieved on time.
Objective 2Below since week three. Not meeting the required goals.
The verdict matters as much as the chart — missed check-ins are counted, and past 100% the line turns purple: the system labels it a moonshot
03
One system. Four very different users.
The resolution was one set of components, truncated by permission — rather than four products.
Every dashboard shares one skeleton. What changes is the vocabulary of the figures — and the vocabulary is the design. Switch between the four.
3Total departments
12Total OKR sets
80Checkins
4.4OKR score
Check-ins this quarter
Check-ins
71 completed · 9 missed
71 completed · 9 missed
71/80filed on time · 9 missed
Contribution by department
Contribution by department
Production 40% · Sales 35% · HR 25%
Production 40% · Sales 35% · HR 25%
hover for the split
Counts departments. Never sees an individual's tasks — the notification panel is the only place she is asked to act. The pies she is proudest of: check-ins completed against missed, and every initiative's status at a glance
2Total teams
2Total OKRs
20Checkins
4.25OKR score
4.75Bonus score
Check-ins this quarter
Check-ins
17 completed · 3 missed
17 completed · 3 missed
17/20filed on time · 3 missed
Contribution by team
Contribution by team
Field Sales 60% · Inside Sales 40%
Field Sales 60% · Inside Sales 40%
hover for the split
Counts teams, gains a bonus score — and a routine-work chart the level above does not carry
3Team size
2Total OKRs
28Checkins
4.25OKR score
4.5Bonus score
Check-ins this quarter
Check-ins
24 completed · 4 missed
24 completed · 4 missed
24/28filed on time · 4 missed
Contribution by member
Contribution by member
Karthik 40% · Beena 35% · Priya 25%
Karthik 40% · Beena 35% · Priya 25%
hover for the split
Counts people, not units — "team size" is the first metric in the system that describes humans
3Critical priorities
2Routine duties
2Collaboratives
4.5OKR score
5Awards
Check-ins this quarter
Check-ins
18 completed · 2 missed
18 completed · 2 missed
18/20filed on time · 2 missed
Contribution by duty
Contribution by duty
Prospect pipeline 50% · Reporting 25% · Follow-ups 25%
Prospect pipeline 50% · Reporting 25% · Follow-ups 25%
hover for the split
The nav item that reads OKRs above him reads IKRs here — his charts count routine duties done, and Awards appears at this level only
The menus offer only what the role can act on — each dropdown lists that role's levels and actions, in the order they use them; anything outside the role simply is not there. And for the individual, the item every level above calls OKRs is titled IKRs.
The OKRs dropdown, per role
Reports behave the same way — the same page is titled overall organisation, department-level or team-level progress depending on who opened it
Seven roles, each with permissions an organisation could customise. A designation says what you do; a role says what you may see and change — and one person can hold several positions at once, in different departments, under different reporting managers. Why that happens at all: in smaller organisations roles are less specialised — departments get clubbed together, and the head of Sales may be the head of Marketing too, in a different reporting line. The decision that resolved it: treat role and level as independent axes. Level decides which dashboard you land on and which part of the tree you see; role decides what you may do once there.
Profile menu · switch position
Rajesh Mehra · 3 positions · click to switch
As Team LeadSees the Planning team tree. Approves his people's responsibilities. Runs the team's check-in schedule.
One person, three positions, three products — from the same data. This is also the honest answer to why the screen count grew: every flow was designed against a permission matrix, not one happy path
Act II The unglamorous screens
A system has to keep working while it is empty, half-edited, or being deleted. That is how thirty screens became 344.
Every object was agreed with the developers as a full create / read / update / delete cycle — and the states in between were designed, not left to the build.
The states most case studies skip · recreated
Archive 0 OKRs
No archived OKRs.
Day one of a real deployment is an empty organisation — every list has a designed zero state, not a blank page.
Success toast next step included
✓Your OKR has been deleted. You can find records of all deleted OKRs in the trash.
Confirmation plus a pointer to where the thing went — not a bare “Done”.
Unsaved-changes guard
Save changes before you leave!
If not, you will lose the data entered.
Stay & saveLeave anyway
Destructive action double-confirmed
Permanently delete OKR?
Are you sure? This removes it from the trash for good.
Yes, proceedCancel
Completion state
All done. Congrats!
Your OKR sets have been submitted to your department head for approval.
The end of a long flow is told to the person, with what happens next.
Field component 8 states
DefaultFocusFilledErrorDisabledSuccessVerifying…Autocomplete
Including an asynchronous “verifying” — department codes and user identifiers are checked for uniqueness as they are typed.
Zero states, guards, toasts with a next step, and double-confirmed destruction — on every object, at every level
Why it was designed first, not lastZero states
The first thing a new customer ever sees is 0 departments, 0 users — the zero state is the first impression, so it could not be an afterthought.
Where the screen count came from344 screens
I defined the flows that tie four levels and seven roles together: every request travels up, gets a decision, and returns as a notification — submitted, approved, rejected, resubmitted. And it is not only requests travelling up: check-ins run on their own schedules at every level — creating, editing, missing and reviewing them added screens of their own. Add the read, update and delete halves of every object, and the states above, and the count becomes 344.
Act II The design system
A component library built for density — and for eyes that are tiring.
Four levels sharing one set of components was the only way three weeks was survivable.
The decision that was not mine. I would have used lighter rules and more whitespace. The client was firm: her readers are senior, often viewing a projected screen — heavy borders and loud headers were an accessibility requirement, not a taste.
Close What survived
The engagement was scoped at two days. It became three weeks and a system.
Accepted by the person who knew most
Across five review rounds the client moved from rejecting the first pass to telling me the design covered flows and edge cases she had not thought to specify — after fourteen years advising organisations on exactly this process.
The logic outlived the first build
The product shipped. The first implementation did not do the design justice, and when it was later rebuilt with a different engineering team, the interaction logic and structure were carried forward rather than restarted.
“Preeti, I’m honestly so impressed by the way you think. You’ve caught edge cases and scenarios I never even imagined my app would end up in, but they’re exactly the kinds of things we need to be thinking about. I also really appreciate how invested you’ve been in this project. You’ve spent hours with me brainstorming and shaping the strategy, and you’ve been just as excited about bringing this idea to life as I have. That kind of involvement is rare, and it’s made this process so much better.”
Reflection One honest thing
This is the project that made me care about talking to users.
I never met a Lily, a Rahul, a Neha or a Karthik. The four of them are stand-ins — which is exactly the point.
I designed a system for four kinds of people and never met one of them: the product was built from the ground up for a startup with no employees yet to shadow, and its customers were bound by confidentiality. Everything I knew came through one expert — genuinely valuable, and not the same as hearing someone walk through their own week. I designed the “seek help from” field without ever watching a person hesitate over it.
What I would do differently
Negotiate for even two hours with people who live this process — to stress-test whether anyone writes honestly in a field their manager reads.
The other limits
Time, and what was buildable — several interactions I loved did not survive the budget and timeline, and were scrapped.
What it changed
I went looking for research skills after this — a master's in human factors, now experimental work in a perception lab. The line runs straight from what I could not answer here.
References
[1] OKRs Tool · OKR Statistics — 67% of organisations track OKRs primarily in spreadsheets · okrstool.com/blog/okr-statistics
[2] Quantive × OKRmentors · The Global State of OKRs Trend Report — 71% of adopters have not fully mastered the OKR process; 46% rate their execution below average · quantive.com
[3] Harvard Business Review (2019) — only 20% of companies achieve 80% of their strategic goals · hbr.org
[4] The Ken (2022) — Indian startups grapple with adopting and abandoning the OKR system · the-ken.com
[5] Fortune Business Insights — OKR software market: Asia-Pacific the fastest-growing region, driven by startups in India and neighbours · fortunebusinessinsights.com
Open to full-time roles
Reach out for a coffee chat.
I’m looking for full-time product design and UX research roles, and I’m happy to relocate.
If you have something that needs research behind it and someone who can take it all the way to a shipped interface, I’d like to hear about it. In person over actual coffee, or virtually — whichever is easier.