A 14-week
double-diamond.
From a fragmented brain-waste problem to a calm, sequenced, action-oriented product — the full UX double-diamond, pace, decisions, and the cuts that defined the product.
Why this problem.
I considered eight problem spaces before committing to this one. Severance won because it satisfied three filters a senior recruiter looks for in a portfolio project:
- Real, underserved problem. 2.5M U.S. + 690K CA layoffs in a 2-year window. Defensible market size.
- Emotional design challenge. Calm-but-urgent is a tone-collision most products fail. Solving it is a craft narrative interviewers remember.
- Research path that didn't require institutional access. Laid-off people are reachable through r/Layoffs and LinkedIn alumni groups, willing to share if the script is respectful.
Goals
Help users see one calm action for today, avoid leaving money on the table, and feel — and look — capable in a moment that often feels neither.
Out of scope (intentionally)
Job board integration (well-served by LinkedIn / Indeed), mental-health chat (clinical risk), resume rewriter (better tools exist), tax estimator (edge case), direct API to state UI portals (regulatory).
Ten interviews. Two countries. Two months.
I conducted 10 generative interviews across five professions and seven U.S. states / Canadian provinces. Each session ran ~60 minutes, recorded with consent and transcribed. The full interview script and competitive audit are linked in the research deep-dive.
Participant panel
| ID | Industry | Role | Region | Window |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P01 | SaaS | Senior PM | California | 1.5 mo ago |
| P02 | Crypto | Engineer | Ontario, CA | 4 mo ago |
| P03 | Retail HQ | Senior Buyer | New York | 6 mo ago |
| P04 | Media | Editor | Texas | 9 mo ago |
| P05 | Healthcare admin | Operations Lead | Illinois | 2 mo ago |
| P06 | Fintech | Designer | BC, CA | 11 mo ago |
| P07 | Banking | Analyst | North Carolina | 3 mo ago |
| P08 | EdTech | CSM | Massachusetts | 7 mo ago |
| P09 | AI startup | Marketing | Washington | 5 wk ago |
| P10 | Aerospace | Project Manager | Quebec, CA | 1 mo ago |
→ Read the full research breakdown, including 10 interview transcripts
From 280 sticky notes to five themes.
Three rounds of clustering reduced 280 quote-level notes to five themes. Each theme mapped 1:1 to a design principle that became the critique rubric for the rest of the project.
→ Principle: The home is a plan, not a feed.
→ Principle: The first three days are slow on purpose.
→ Principle: Onboarding captures the whole house.
→ Principle: No generic content. State + situation, always.
→ Principle: One number, not a chart.
HMW → Crazy 8s → RICE → wireframes.
Twelve How-Might-We statements. A Crazy 8 round on the home screen. RICE prioritization across 24 candidate features. Three wireframe iterations from paper to mid-fi.
RICE prioritization
Each candidate feature scored on Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort. The features that survived into v1:
| Feature | RICE | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Day 30 wrap-up & reflection | 1440 | v1 |
| Subscription audit (one-tap) | 1280 | v1 |
| Onboarding household-composition capture | 1200 | v1 |
| Day 1–3 calm pacing pattern | 1000 | v1 |
| Runway Calculator (one-number tile) | 1000 | v1 |
| Personalized 30-day plan home screen | 750 | v1 |
| State / Province UI Filing Helper | 600 | v1 |
| Health Insurance Decision Tool | 540 | v1 |
| Severance Reviewer | 432 | v1 |
| Visa / immigration timeline overlay | 120 | v1.1 |
| Mental-health chat companion | 100 | cut |
| Job board integration | 80 | cut |
Five participants. Nine issues. Two critical fixes.
Moderated, remote, think-aloud usability testing produced a SUS of 84.5 and a calm-vs-panicked Likert of 4.6/5. Two critical issues — the severance-window banner felt coercive, and the Texas state-portal fallback was missing — were fixed in v4.
Four things I'll carry to the next project.
1. Restraint is a feature.
Most products try to do more. This product wins by doing less, on purpose. The calm-mode home screen — one card, empty space below — was the most-discussed surface in usability testing.
2. Tone is a design system token.
It's the most consequential token, and the hardest to defend in critique. I needed three iterations to get the calm-mode copy right. The 52-year-old test participant who said "this reads like you think I'm fragile" rewrote that screen.
3. Cross-list, don't bury.
Information architecture rarely fails because navigation is too deep — it fails because users have multiple correct mental models. Cross-listing the Severance Reviewer under both Money and Documents lifted findability from 75% to 91%.
4. Hire a critic with lived experience.
A friend who'd been laid off in 2023 reviewed the calm-mode copy before round-2 testing. Her note ("'the world can wait' assumes a kind of life I didn't have") rewrote the line and made the whole calm-mode opt-in instead of forced.
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