Turning Completion into Commitment
Users finished the intake survey and had nothing to show for it. This is the project that changed that.
💬 Some details in this case study have been adjusted or generalized for portfolio presentation. Core decisions and design rationale reflect the actual work.
Project
Intake Survey Debrief
Team
PM, People Analytics, Software Engineer
Scope
End to end
Timeline
Q1 2026
01_Context
The goal was activation.
The gap was the moment right after intake.
The AI coach existed. Users just weren't engaging with it — and the only window to change that was immediately after the intake survey.
🎯 Strategic Goal
Drive first Ally interaction within 7 days of intake completion
🤔 Problem
Users completed intake and landed on the home screen with nothing to show for it. No payoff. No direction. No reason to continue.
💡 The opportunity
The gap between finishing the survey and feeling like something had happened was exactly where the AI coach could step in.
02_Problem
The team had a direction. I had a question.
Users who just finished a long survey aren't ready to start a conversation. They're waiting to find out if the effort was worth it.
Team's direction
Chat-based debrief
Build the debrief inside the chat interface. It had precedent, felt on strategy, and everyone aligned quickly.
⚠️ Low engagement in prior product
My proposal
Full-screen dedicated experience
Backed by three consistent signals from prior data, session recordings, and user interviews.
✅ Adopted after evidence review
03_Evidence
Three signals, One consistent direction.
Users who just finished a long survey aren't ready to start a conversation. They're waiting to find out if the effort was worth it.
📉
Priori product data
Chat-based debrief had very low AI coach interaction. Users completed the survey but didn't engage with the chat.
Strong signal
🧪
User testing
Users found the chat debrief hard to understand. The format felt like starting another task, not receiving a result.
Strong signal
▶️
Session recording
Some users spent significantly more time with the traditional report than with the AI chat interface — then abandoned chat quickly.
Directional
💡
Design intuition
Chat feels like another task — not a reward after completing a survey. A debrief should feel like a reveal, not a prompt.
Suplementary
04_Proposal
Design the feeling, not just the screen
The debrief was structured around one question: what should the user feel at each moment?
👀
Seen
This result reflects who I actually am
💡
Curious
I want to understand more
🎯
Ready
I know what to do next
💎
Reward
I earned something
worth holding onto
💭
To align the team, I didn't lead with screens . I built a narrative around the user's emotional state. That clarity moved decisions faster than any wireframe would have.
05_Proposal
Every moment needed to earn the next one.
The experience was designed to feel like something you receive, not something you do.
Leadership pattern preview
A named result
Showing a pattern preview early creates a hook. A recognizable, named profile feels personal and worth holding onto — not a number to forget.
Summary card
Something to take away
End the experience like a certificate — shareable to LinkedIn or downloadable as an image. Your result as something real, not just read.
💭
Each decision was tested against one question: does this make the user feel like the effort was worth it?
06_Phase design
Three phases. Each with one emotional job.
The experience was designed to feel like something you receive, not something you do.
Phase 01
Arrival
Acknowledge effort. Make the system feel like it's thinking, not just outputting. Build anticipation before revealing anything.
Phase 02
Debrief
Core insight first, then real-world behaviors, strengths, tradeoffs. Opinionated over comprehensive — we deliberately left things out.
Phase 03
Closing
Ask for a decision, not just attention. One lightweight experiment to choose. A commitment that doesn't feel heavy.
07_Process + craft
The right partner. The right tools.
The experience was designed to feel like something you receive, not something you do.
People analytics
Co-designing the leadership archetypes
The patterns needed to be psychologically grounded, not just intuitively named. Working with a domain expert made the profiles load-bearing — something users could recognize themselves in and hold onto.
Figma make + AI
Raising the quality bar without the cost
The patterns needed to be psychologically grounded, not just intuitively named. Working with a domain expert made the profiles load-bearing — something users could recognize themselves in and hold onto.
1 hour⚡️
vs a full day for equivalent complexity
Illustration exploration
Accelerating visual direction
Used AI tools to rapidly explore illustration directions for the leadership profiles — keeping the aesthetic warm and human rather than clinical, without spending days on early-stage explorations.
Quality ⬆️
vs a full day for equivalent complexity
08_Reframe
The AI doesn't need to be seen to be felt.
Ally’s presence across the experience
Set the AI-led tone
Greeting from Ally + chain-of-thought animation — Ally is reviewing your results, not just displaying them.
Core reveal moment
Ally introduces the leadership profile directly — the result is framed as something interpreted and shared.
Bridge to chat
Ally steps forward at the moment of commitment — logo + description of how Ally helps with the chosen focus.
09_Testing
Testing confirmed the narrative.
One detail changed the design.
I assumed anchoring the leadership profile at the start and end was enough. In testing, a user tried to find it mid-way — and couldn't.
👥 2 users
The fix
Not to make it bigger. To make it persist quietly — a subtle label throughout that kept users oriented without competing with the content.
10_Outcomes
Shipped. Being measured. Already signaling.
Full activation metrics are being tracked as the feature rolls out to GA.
✅
82%
Followed the narrative from first insight to chosen focus
🎯
36%
Continued the conversation with Ally after completing the debrief
Next phase
Leadership profile surfaces in the home tab as an ongoing personal anchor
🟢 Design is ready and implemented
Let's Connect.
Interested in product design,
behavior change, AI, and building systems that scale.
studiohaena3@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/studiohaena
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