Reimagining personal performance management for modern teams

Traditional performance management focuses on lagging indicators like attrition, engagement, productivity and absenteeism. But what about the other factors that are often forgotten? Employee performance capabilities, leadership & culture, presenteeism, and holistic wellbeing rarely get the attention they deserve. Instead, businesses often reach for superficial fixes that treat symptoms rather than causes, leaving the fundamental performance gaps unaddressed.

Jessica Phillips is challenging this approach at PowerUp Global. By combining elite performance psychology with HR expertise, health science, and business intelligence, they've built a SaaS platform that helps organisations identify and close the hidden capability gaps costing them millions. It's performance management reimagined from the ground up, focusing not on what's easy to measure, but on what actually matters.

The Challenge

PowerUp had a bold vision: to transform how organisations, teams, and individuals approach performance in an era shaped by rapid change and AI disruption. 

They'd already developed an early-access product (web and mobile) designed to digitise manual performance management processes, making them more valuable for everyone involved - employers got aggregated dashboards, whilst employees received supportive content and structured activities for each development cycle.

The product showed real promise, but the technical foundation needed strengthening to match the ambition of the vision.

The platform wasn't yet responsive, and the onboarding experience, whilst comprehensive, felt a bit complex for new users. PowerUp wanted to create something that people would want to return to, a platform that felt approachable and rewarding from the very first interaction.

The Approach

We kicked things off with a project alignment workshop to really understand PowerUp's north star and what success would look like for this project. After an existing codebase review, we agreed together to focus on the employee journey via the web platform, which was further along in development than the mobile companion app at that stage.

Our approach blended strategic UX thinking with practical design and development:

• Conducted a comprehensive UX audit of the current product to identify pain points and opportunities
• Ran a Value Proposition Canvas to ensure the product's features aligned tightly with customer needs, pains, and gains (critical for an established product refining its market fit)
• Ran a thorough competitor review to inform our design priorities
• Created a MoSCoW framework to prioritise the changes that would have the biggest impact
• Explored third-party tools for data visualisation and learning content (making recommendations so PowerUp could make informed decisions about what would work best for their users)
• Delivered detailed journey maps and web flows through a highly collaborative design process with PowerUp
• Partnered with their in-house backend developer, focusing our expertise on the frontend development and UI design
• Set up a staging environment to establish solid development practices going forward

We used the existing code as a helpful reference for what the platform needed to do, then built something more robust and scalable from there.

The Solution

We delivered a comprehensive frontend transformation that touched every aspect of the user experience:

Visual identity, UX & UI design

• Finalised a complete visual identity refresh, refining PowerUp’s existing colour palette to create a more cohesive, aesthetically comprehensive system whilst ensuring everything met accessibility standards
• Created a comprehensive component library with beautifully redesigned UI components that PowerUp can build on as the platform evolves
• Designed custom data visualisations including the personal performance score graphic, three levers display, and custom graph components - turning complex information into clean, simple visuals that communicate clearly without overwhelming users
• Custom designed and built animations that improved look and feel of onboarding and loading experience, adding moments of celebration when users make progress
• Full questionnaire redesign to keep users focused while navigating through content heavy forms, added questionnaire breakpoints with custom animations
• Streamlined site map and reduced excess noise so users can easily navigate through different profile states

Technical Foundation

• Upgraded the codebase to TypeScript for better long-term maintainability, code quality and scaleability 
• Implemented responsive design across the entire platform with a mobile-first approach, so it works beautifully across devices and gives PowerUp a solid foundation for future PWA or native deployment
• Built the frontend to dynamically work with backend content, making it flexible for future updates
• Set up custom analytics tracking for deeper insights into user behaviour and engagement

Reimagining Onboarding

We worked with their team to completely rethink the onboarding experience from a UX perspective. Rather than hitting users with everything at once, we restructured the entire user journey to feel more welcoming and immediately valuable. This included integrating a new founder introduction video (recorded at our Impact Builder studios) to give users context about what they were about to experience.

The questionnaire itself got a major UX and UI rework. Drawing on proven design patterns (particularly from GOV.UK's design system), we made complex questions more approachable and the overall flow clearer. Users could now see exactly where they were in the process, sections were broken into manageable chunks, and we introduced micro-insights along the way. Instead of having to wait until the very end for feedback, users were now getting something valuable back throughout the journey.

Enhanced User Journey

• Redesigned the information architecture and UI for the improvement plan, structuring it around 90-day cycles with daily habit tracking, weekly check-ins, and quarterly full assessments
• Designed and implemented new features like achievement badges and SMART analysis for diary reflections
• Created a post-questionnaire summary and insights experience that feels rewarding and actionable

Content & tone of voice

• Delivered content and tone of voice guides (informed by competitive analysis) to help PowerUp maintain consistency as they continue developing content

The Results

We delivered a transformed platform that brings PowerUp's vision to life in a way that feels polished and professional. The comprehensive UI refresh and UX improvements mean the platform now feels seamless, professional, and genuinely enjoyable to use. The responsive design foundation means users can now access their entire personal development journey seamlessly on any device, whilst the reimagined onboarding experience invites people in rather than putting them off.

The rebuilt frontend, supported by a cohesive design system and component library, gives PowerUp a solid, scalable foundation to build on as they grow. Perhaps most importantly, through careful UX design, we've created an experience that rewards users throughout their journey - every interaction offers something valuable, transforming what could feel like 'just another questionnaire' into an engaging process of self-discovery and development.

We can’t wait to see where PowerUp takes their platform next.