# Helping Organizations Achieve Their Goals — Paycor (7Geese)

**Designer:** Topp Brocales · Senior Product Designer
**Company:** 7Geese, now Paycor Talent Development (https://www.paycor.com/hcm-software/talent-development/)
**Feature:** Objectives Creator redesign (flagship feature)
**Role:** End-to-end product design (domain research, concept testing, usability validation, launch)
**Timeline:** 2017–2021
**Key Result:** Aligned objectives grew from 0.02% to 17% — an 85,000% increase
**Outcome:** Contributed to 7Geese's acquisition by Paycor in 2020

## Summary

Increasing aligned objectives from 0.02% to 17% — an 85,000% growth. Led the end-to-end redesign of 7Geese's flagship Objectives Creator, from domain research through concept testing, usability validation and launch.

## Challenge

The previous Objectives Creator assumed users already knew what their goals were and understood the OKR methodology. User feedback made the gap explicit — the process wasn't intuitive and it wasn't easy to pin down measurable objectives. With competing products entering the market, maintaining the platform's edge meant making goal-setting genuinely accessible.

## Discovery

### Domain Research
Before touching any design work, Topp read Measure What Matters by John Doerr and Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke — both essential texts on OKR. He also met with in-house experts to gain hands-on knowledge of how the framework plays out in practice.

### User Archetypes & Journey Mapping
7Geese's customers span a wide range of company types and sizes. Three distinct user archetypes were defined, mapping their specific roles in the OKR process — reflecting both the top-down and bottom-up nature of how objectives get created and aligned across an organization.

### Baseline Metrics
Usage data was pulled from Pendo to establish a pre-launch baseline. OKRs follow seasonal business cycles that don't always align to the calendar year, so getting the measurement framework right before launch was essential.

## Ideation

A design workshop was run with the team. Discovery findings were presented, then a Crazy 8s sketch exercise generated over 60 ideas in a single afternoon. Five distinct concepts were selected — each representing a different user mental model for how objective creation might work.

## Validation

### Concept Testing
A structured concept test was run with a select group of users. The form concept resonated most and the wizard pop-up format was a consistent nice-to-have. Key insight: OKR creation is inherently sophisticated — the old creator was too simplistic.

### Usability Testing
Nine participants completed scenario-based tasks scored on the System Usability Scale. The average came in at 80 out of 100, with users describing the new experience as more intuitive. The standout finding: no two customers approached goal setting the same way, reinforcing the modularity decision.

## Outcome

Aligned objectives increased from 0.02% to 17% — a whopping 85,000% growth. Alignment of objectives is the key to success for every goal and ensures product stickiness. Research played a key role in defining the most viable direction.