🧩 The Problem

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Managers and employees often lacked authentic conversations beyond work tasks. This created emotional distance, limiting psychological safety and reducing growth potential across teams.

No prior product existed in the organization to address emotional connection or build human understanding at scale.

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🔍 Discovery & Research

• Co-created feature ideas with the Chief Product and Technology Officer
• Studied apps like Agape for emotional UX patterns and interaction strategies.
• Simplicity and surprise will drive deeper engagement — if the experience feels personal, people will return.

🧠 Strategy

The product would:

• Foster conversations that reveal personality, values, and emotion.
• Use question cards as conversation starters.
• Only reveal answers after both parties respond — reinforcing commitment and curiosity.
• Gamify the experience
• Integrate anonymous feedback surveys .

✏️ Design Execution

• Can add all your workplace connections, not just your manager.
• Visual feedback on relationship strength, based on interaction metrics.
• A social motivator, celebrating emotionally healthy teams.

🤝 Teamwork & Leadership

• Directly partnered with the Chief Product & Tech Officer
• Used whiteboarding and brain-dumps to quickly align vision
• Prototype built in collaboration with a lean dev team

🌀 Design Thinking Framework I Applied

Empathize

Listened to the emotional gap between teams, even with no existing usage data

Define

Identified trust and vulnerability as core design values

Ideate

Explored multiple flows and micro-interactions via sketches and storyboards

Prototype

Built a clickable, high-fidelity prototype in just 2 days

Test

Stakeholder feedback was immediately positive, minimal iterations needed

Behavioral UX

Using delayed gratification (answer reveal)

Gamification Strategy

Connection health + leaderboard

Emotional Design

Created a ritual-like rhythm of interaction

📈 Results

• Shipped MVP from zero to prototype in 48 hours
• 46% of users responded to question prompts
• 76% became regular users
• Product received top-level support as a cultural initiative
• Sparked conversations around emotional safety, leadership growth, and cross-functional bonds