Turning Work
Into Wins
Adding a Feature to Gusto
Reflection in SMBs is often underutilized & unproductive.
Only 14% of employees find self-reviews productive. Without a simple way to capture work in the flow of the day, employees rely on memory. Leading to stress, incomplete reviews and lost contributions.
Solution
A lightweight reflection tool embedded in daily work.
A persistent FAB lets employees capture quick reflections anytime. Entries save to a private timeline in Gusto and flow into the self-review draft, reducing stress and ensuring contributions are recognized.
Always-available FAB for quick capture
Private timeline organizes reflections
Entries auto-fill self-review drafts
Seamlessly fits within the users workflow
Why Gusto?
I have hands-on experience running payroll with Gusto for small businesses. That gave me a front-row seat to how approachable yet task-focused their product is. This project built on that foundation by imagining a new feature to make performance reviews less stressful and more meaningful.
Role
UX Researcher & Product Designer
Team
Solo
Timeline
4 Weeks
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Fireflies.ai, Maze, Google Meet, Google Drive, ChatGPT
Empathize
Without Capture, Memory Fails
I interviewed 8 SMB employees who regularly participate in self-reviews, conducting the sessions remotely over Google Meet. Using affinity mapping, I clustered insights into themes that revealed recurring pain points:
“I end up scrolling through Slack to remember what I did.”
“By the time reviews come, details are fuzzy.”
“I jot things down in random docs, but it never feels organized.”
To ground these insights, I created an empathy map capturing what employees say, think, feel, and do. This exposed a clear gap between intent and behavior—employees want to reflect, but lack tools to make it consistent.
Empathy Map
Patterns that emerged
Employees relied on scattered tools like Slack, notes apps, and shared boards.
Reflections were retroactive and vague, missing important details.
The lack of capture caused stress at review time and left contributions underrepresented.
Key Insight: Employees don’t need more structure at review time, they need a way to capture contributions in the flow of work, so reflection feels natural instead of forced.
Define
Different Styles Need Flexible Flows
From research, I developed two personas:
Leila a nonprofit specialist who values nuance and wants reflection to give her space for thoughtful context.
Darius a fast-paced data scientist who needs reflection to be quick and seamless, capturing thoughts before they’re lost.
These two perspectives underscored a tension: some employees want speed, while others want depth. Addressing both became the core design challenge.
How Might We make reflection effortless and always within reach without disrupting work?
Goals
Defining the challenge required looking at success from multiple angles. For employees, the goal was clear: reflection needed to feel natural and low-stress, with details captured in the moment rather than reconstructed later. For the product, the goal was to design a feature that felt like an authentic extension of Gusto’s approachable brand—not an add-on tacked to the side. And for the technical side, the goal was feasibility: the solution had to fit smoothly into Gusto’s existing workflows and scale across different types of employees.
User: Reduce review stress, preserve detail, make reflection natural.
Project: Deliver a lightweight, brand-consistent feature.
Technical: Ensure seamless integration with Gusto workflows.
Together, these goals highlighted a central challenge:
Ideation Process
Ideate
Turning Work Into Wins
After a brainstorming session, and taking my ideas to a group crit vote, one concept stood out: an always available Quick Capture tool for desktop that’s fast enough for Darius, and offers Leila real agency.
Core Functions
Capture a screenshot, upload a file, or jot a quick note
Set a reminder to revisit.
Jump straight to the timeline to complete entries later.
Feature Set List
I mapped a user flow to serve both immediate and delayed behavior:
Capture now while the moment is fresh.
Complete later by adding context and marking done.
This ensured Quick Capture worked for real work rhythms without breaking focus.
User Flow & Task Flows
Prototype
Quick Capture Build Confidence in Reviews
Low-fi prototypes validated the basic concept. 100% of participants easily competed the tasks, but a few opportunities for improvement surfaced:
The timeline felt clunky, and visually heavy.
Completion states weren’t clear.
Some hesitated on icons.
Iterations
Add hover labels to icons
Revisit the timeline layout
Lo-Fi vs Hi-Fi Timeline Visual
Brand Alignment
Balancing Playfulness with Precision
With functionality validated, the next challenge was making Quick Capture feel native to Gusto. Early tests showed the timeline needed stronger hierarchy, which pushed me to dive into Gusto’s design language.
Brand research: Jason Marder’s rebrand case study, Gusto Design team articles on Medium, product walkthroughs on YouTube, and their Dribbble portfolio.
What I found
Brand voice → approachable and lighthearted.
Product UI → intentionally task-focused and efficient.
Style Tile
Test
Users Didn't Notice the FAB
With the UI kit and feedback from initial testing applied to the designs, it was time to validate them in context.
Method: Unmoderated, remote study in Maze focusing on the full workflow:
Use the FAB to capture → continue working → return to the timeline → add context → mark complete
Maze Snippets
What worked
The flow felt intuitive once the setup was clear.
The redesigned timeline made Incomplete vs Complete obvious.
Hover labels resolved icon hesitation.
What didn’t
Awareness. Several participants did not realize the FAB is always available or that they should capture the current screen.
Iteration: Added a one-time onboarding modal showing where the FAB lives, how to open it, and what each icon does.
Final Hi-Fi Prototype
Proper Onboarding Made it Flow
The final design was brought to life through a high-fidelity interactive prototype that demonstrates how reflection fits naturally into the flow of work.
Viewers can follow Darius, a data scientist, as he uses Gusto’s new Quick Capture FAB to document and revisit an accomplishment.
Two connected scenarios illustrate how the feature integrates with everyday tools and supports meaningful reflection without disrupting focus.
Use the sidebar in the prototype to navigate between:
Flow 1 — Capturing a Reflection
Flow 2 — Revisiting and Completing a Reflection
Next Steps
Users Want Reflection Tied to Full Reviews
To move forward, I’d expand the prototype beyond capture into the full self-review experience and validate it in more realistic contexts. The goal is to ensure the tool supports not just awareness, but true follow-through.
Extend the flow: connect Quick Capture entries directly into the self-review process.
Strengthen onboarding: weave awareness patterns into first-run and re-engagement moments.
Validate in context: test in live work environments to see how awareness and completion hold up.
Key takeaway: Reflection tools succeed when they bridge both ends of the process — capture in the moment and completion when it matters most.
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