10 interviews.
5 themes.
3 personas.
The qualitative research that shaped every design decision. The single most consequential finding: users don't lack information — they lack ordering.
Excerpts from the 10 conversations.
Each interview ran ~60 minutes, recorded with consent and transcribed. Below are excerpts that shaped specific design decisions — the full transcripts (anonymized) are in the source repository.
"I'm a project manager. I literally do this for a living and I couldn't see my own next step. The information was all out there. I just couldn't sequence it."
Design takeaway: Sequencing is the #1 felt need. Confirmed by every later interview. Drove the home screen design.
"I posted my CV on LinkedIn within four hours. I think it made me look desperate. Three of my close friends DM'd me afterwards saying 'you should have called me first.'"
Design takeaway: The "update LinkedIn" decision is sequenced. The product holds Daniel back from a Day-1 post.
"The first three days, do nothing. The next four days, do paperwork. After that you can be a person again."
Design takeaway: Days 1–3 are not productive days. Drove calm-mode design.
"A thing that takes the dollar amount of what I have, the dollar amount of what I owe, and tells me how many months I can survive. Because that's the question I wake up at 4 AM with."
Design takeaway: Runway is one number, not a chart. Most-cited financial want.
"Are we going to be okay? — quoted from her teenager that night. The question I think about every day. I'm not a failure. But the feeling was there."
Design takeaway: Severance is a household event, not an individual one. Captured in onboarding.
"OPT extension. So I had 60 days from termination to either find a new job, transfer my SEVIS, or leave the country. The 60-day clock was my whole world."
Design takeaway: Visa status changes everything. Onboarding asks. Visa pathway is v1.1 priority.
Four additional interviews (P04 Ramon, P06 Eli, P07 Robert, P10 Sylvie) also informed the design — full excerpts in the source repository's 03-Sample-Interviews.md.
Five themes from 280 sticky notes.
Three rounds of clustering reduced 280 quote-level notes to five themes. Each theme mapped 1:1 to a design principle.
| Theme | Cluster size | → Design principle |
|---|---|---|
| Sequencing — "tell me what to do today" | 22% | The home is a plan, not a feed. |
| Shock window — first 3 days are not productive | 18% | The first three days are slow on purpose. |
| Household — partner, kids, parents, providers | 16% | Onboarding captures the whole house. |
| Trust by specificity — peer voice over authority | 14% | No generic content. State + situation, always. |
| Runway anxiety — money as psychological state | 12% | One number, not a chart. |
| Remaining 18% scattered across smaller clusters: networking, resume rewriting, outplacement experiences, visa stories, industry-specific patterns. | ||
Three personas, drawn from composites.
Each persona is built from at least three real interviews to avoid anchoring to one story.
Five phases of the first 30 days.
The Meeting · Shock Window · Paperwork Sprint · Recalibration · Reentry Prep. Each with its own emotional valence and product opportunity.
Card-sort, tree-test, sitemap.
The IA went through three iterations. The final tree-test (n=12) measured 90% average task success — up from 67% in v1, driven by cross-listing and deep-linking, not navigation depth.
Three primary flows, mapped end-to-end.
Onboarding · file unemployment · severance reviewer. Each with decision points, error handling, and shared design patterns documented.
From research to design.
Next: how those five themes turned into 8 wireframed screens.
See the Wireframes →