Defining a vision for AI-assisted goal setting and career growth at Dayforce
As Lead Product Designer, I led an initiative to rethink the goals feature across the Performance Management ecosystem, defining a future vision that connected individual growth, business outcomes, and AI-assisted guidance.
Company
Dayforce
Human Capital Management Software
My Role
Lead Product Designer
Duration
8 Weeks
The Problem
Goals are foundational to performance management, they help with setting direction, tracking performance, and supporting employee growth but the current experience treats them as isolated, static artifacts rather than a system that drives progress and outcomes.
In other words, the module functioned more like file storage than a business driver, limiting its impact on both employee growth and organizational performance.
How I Contributed
As Lead Product Designer, I worked hands-on across every phase of the project, contributing directly to research, design, and strategy, while coaching a senior designer.
- Defined and conducted research strategy
- Synthesized customer insights, data, and secondary research
- Facilitated cross-functional workshops and aligned stakeholders
- Created wireframes, concepts, and high-fidelity designs
- Built prototypes, defined future-state experience, and led presentations
Who I worked With
Design
Sr Product Designer
Product
Director of Product Management
Product Managers
Engineering
Sr Software Engineering Manager
My Approach
Journey Map
Mapped the jobs to be done for managers, employees, and admins using existing research to understand how goals fit into the broader performance journey
Competitor Analysis
Evaluated key competitors to understand how they structured goals at both the individual and organizational level
Secondary Research
Reviewed research, articles, and essays on goal-setting best practices within organizations to ground our direction in established theory
Customer Data
Analyzed usage data to understand how customers were actually using the existing goals module in real-world scenarios
Concept Testing
Conducted hybrid concept testing and user interviews to validate early ideas and ensure alignment with user needs
This helped us understand where goals needed to surface across the performance journey, how other platforms approached goal setting, what best practices looked like in real organizations, and how our customers were currently using the system.
These insights directly informed the design phase and allowed us to move validated concepts into concept testing with users.
How I Leveraged AI
I leverage AI as a thought partner to navigate ambiguity, explore solution spaces, and accelerate early strategic and conceptual work. Here’s how I used AI during this project
Chat GPT
Competitive Analysis, Research Synthesis and Problem Definition
Figma Make
Exploring different solutions and prototypes
Rovo
Crawling confluence for problem definition and aligning on Jobs to Be Done
What we learned
As we moved through research and concept testing, a few clear patterns emerged. These insights directly informed the direction of the experience.
Getting started is harder than it should be
People often know what they want to achieve, but struggle to turn that into a clear, structured goal. The blank page creates friction right at the moment momentum should begin.
Goals fade into the background over time
After they’re set, goals are rarely revisited in a consistent way. Without lightweight ways to stay engaged, they become something people only think about during review cycles.
It’s hard to see how work connects to the bigger picture
Most people don’t have a clear line of sight between their goals and company priorities. That disconnect makes goals feel less meaningful and harder to stay motivated around.
Growth and performance feel disconnected
Development goals and performance goals are often managed separately, even though they’re closely related. This makes it harder to understand how day-to-day work contributes to long-term growth.
Managers are left to piece the story together
By the time reviews come around, managers are often relying on memory or scattered inputs. There’s no clear, continuous view of progress over time.
Turning Insights into Solutions
Each solution was designed to address key user needs and translate findings into more intentional product decisions.
Insights → Innovation
Users struggled to create meaningful goals and get started
Introduced guided goal creation with AI-assisted prompts, refinement, and suggested key results
Users often had ideas for goals but weren’t sure how to turn them into something structured or measurable. We focused on making it easier to get started without forcing a rigid format. The experience gives people a simple starting point and lets them shape and refine goals as they go.
Insights → Innovation
Goals lost relevance over time and were difficult to maintain
Designed lightweight updates and flexible editing to support ongoing progress and course correction
After goals were created, people rarely came back to update them consistently. We designed quick, lightweight ways to check in on progress without making it feel like extra work. This helped goals stay current as priorities naturally changed over time.
Insights → Innovation
Alignment between individual, team, and company goals was unclear
Surfaced contextual alignment and introduced cascading goal structures
People often didn’t have a clear view of how their work connected to team or company priorities. We brought that context directly into the goal experience so it was visible while working, not hidden in another section. This made it easier to see how individual work contributes to larger outcomes.
Insights → Innovation
Development and performance existed as separate experiences
Connected growth and performance goals to create a more unified system
Development goals and performance goals were being managed separately, which made growth feel disconnected from evaluation. We explored ways to bring them closer together so both could support a clearer view of progress. This helped create a more connected picture of how people are growing and performing.
Insights → Innovation
Managers lacked visibility and relied on manual effort during reviews
Built manager insights and integrated goals into review workflows with AI-assisted summaries
Managers often had to piece together performance information from memory or scattered notes. We surfaced key goal activity in one place so it was easier to understand what had happened over time. AI helped summarize this information so managers could focus more on decisions and conversations.
The Impact
While this work was exploratory, it directly shaped how goals will evolve within Dayforce. It created clarity, alignment, and a roadmap that teams could build against over time.
Roadmap Clarity
Established a multi-year, phased roadmap that translated a future-state vision into actionable capabilities. Gave Product and Engineering a clear path forward without losing sight of long-term direction
Organizational Alignment
Aligned Product, Engineering, and Design around a shared North Star for goals. Shifted conversations from incremental improvements to system-level thinking and long-term impact.
Strategic Repositioning
Reframed goals from a static feature into a core driver of performance, development, and business outcomes. Positioned the goals experience as foundational to the future of Talent Management within Dayforce.