What if your work could speak for itself? What if feedback from peers mattered as much as the job titles? What if projects, not job positions, told your story? With these questions in mind, I led the design and aided in strategy of building WorkWith.
The problem
Resumes don’t tell the full story
In an era where collaboration, skills, and continuous learning define professionals, do we still need to rely on a format that hasn’t changed in decades?
LinkedIn doesn’t fare much better
It focusses on static profiles, keyword-based searches, and one-dimensional job histories. It misses to capture nuances, reducing professionals to generic profiles stuffed with buzzwords.
A numbers game
There’s no way to truly validate who you’ve worked with, what you contributed, or how your peers perceive your skills. Your professional relationships become superficial, and the quality of your network is lost in the race for more connections.
Initial wireframe and early UI explorations
Putting peer validation at the core
We pivoted the strategy to make peer validation i.e. Opinions to be the north star of our product. This was all about allowing users to describe their experience working with someone.
Latest UI for profile
Our first version of the opinions (‘feedback’ earlier) flow had 3 key parts:
Pros & Cons: Encouraging reviewers to highlight the strengths and improvement areas of the person.
Memorable experience: A space for reviewers to call out one incident that stood out the most during their collaboration.
Ratings on Soft Skills (Integrity, Initiative, Intelligence): To add a quantitative layer to the opinion.
Feedback flow
User-testing: Round 1
We tested a prototype of a few sections of the product including feedbacks, projects, discover feed with 5 users. For now, we will focus on a few insights gathered from the feedbacks flow:
Memorable experience was the star
This section consistently stood out. It allowed reviewers to share personal anecdotes, making the feedback feel authentic and human. Users felt that stories added more value than generic praise.
Ratings on soft skills were ambiguous
Users struggled to rate soft skills objectively on a scale of 1-10. Many leaned towards giving higher ratings, often defaulting to 9 or 10. So we added ratings for professional skills and made all ratings anonymous.
Pros & Cons felt subjective
We observed that these lead to writer's block. Many users preferred to skip ‘cons’. This insight pushed us to remove this section entirely and instead focus on guided questions for specific, work-related insights, and made them too optional.
Anonymity dilemma
Some users expressed that anonymity might allow them to be more honest and critical. Some disliked the concept and associated it with spreading negativity, trolling.
- Vanshika, a UT participant
After incorporating the insights, we tested the prototype again and landed on the version you see below.
Feedback flow V2
Skills and ratings
Onboarding: the first impression
Our approach was to break the journey into small, purposeful steps that gradually introduced users to the platform’s core ideas.
Onboarding snapshots in carousel
A holistic profile
While feedback and opinions form the foundation of validation on WorkWith, Brainfood and Projects were designed to bring depth and individuality to a profile.
Brainfood
Brainfood is designed to be a personal, no-nonsense space for sharing valuable resources. Not another place for thought leadership or personal branding.
No likes/comments → Keeps the platform from turning into a popularity contest.
Projects
Many people hesitate to showcase their work online because writing a full-fledged case study feels overwhelming or time-consuming. Often, they don’t even know where to start.
We wanted to make this easier by providing a simple yet powerful structure—just four key sections: Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This helps users articulate their impact effortlessly, without the pressure of crafting a perfect narrative
Images of Brainfood and Project
