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BCG CD+
Building Career Development at Scale
Product Designer, 2024-2025
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BCG CD+ origin story.
Picture this: You're a consultant at BCG. You need to know your career status.
Where do you go? Workday. A system designed for payroll and compliance, not for unlocking your potential.
Now multiply that by 25,000 employees. All trying to navigate feedback forms. Assignment tracking. Performance reviews. Career progression. All of it buried in a system that was literally built for something else.
The result? High non-completion rates on career tasks. Feedback forms sitting in limbo. Consultants not knowing where they stood. Managers drowning in parallel workflows. And leadership? They had zero visibility into whether the career development machine was actually working.
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My mission
My mission was different from typical product design work. There was no PRD. No tidy requirements document. What I had were fragmented screens, workflow knowledge, and a deep understanding of organizational pain.
I had to reverse-engineer the product from chaos. And build something that could actually work at enterprise scale for 7 completely different user types, each with their own career progression needs.
The Workday's Ugly Cousin
The old system wasn't broken in the "fix it" sense. It was broken in the "this was never meant for this" sense.
Notifications
Sometimes in-app, sometimes in email. Inconsistently styled. No bundling. No smart digest options. No sync between what you saw in-app and what hit your inbox. Consultants missed deadlines constantly because they didn't even know they had something due.
CD+ Dashboard
It was just... a mess of tasks. Associates, Consultants, Partners, MDPs, CD Chairs, everyone had different workflows, but the UI treated them the same. No role based clarity. No prioritization. Just "here's your list of things. Good luck."
My Performance
Non-existent. You had to dig through Workday's dense analytics interface to see feedback timeliness, completion rates, or whether your team was actually progressing through their career pipeline.
Feedback forms
Scattered across different systems. No unified view. No accountability. No clear "here's where you stand." and how customers or clients can benefit from it.
How I Fixed It
Without a PRD
This is where the design work got interesting. I didn't have a requirements document. What I had was deep context, screen designs, and the workflows embedded in those screens.
Chapter 1 : The Notification Resurrection
The core issue
Notification sync was completely broken. Different styles created confusion. Email notifications weren't stacked. In-app and email lived in different universes.
Instead of bolting a patch onto Workday's notification system, I redesigned it from first principles:
The solution
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Unified in-app and email notifications with consistent styling
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Immediate notifications for time-sensitive items (feedback due tomorrow, assignment changes)
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Weekly digest emails for non-urgent updates (rolled up, not spamming your inbox)
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Pinning and grouping so people could prioritize what mattered
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Responsive design across every device (iPad Pro to iPhone) because consultants don't just work at desks
Why this worked?
People actually saw what they needed to do. Notifications became a tool, not noise.
Completion rates went up because people weren't missing deadlines they never knew existed.
The designs showed careful attention to responsive behavior, typography guidelines, and spacing... everything needed to feel like a native BCG product, not a Workday orphan
Chapter 2 : The Career Transformation
Seven Personas, One Interface
The core issue
This was the beast. The CT Homepage needed to serve 7 completely different user types, each with their own workflows:
The 7 front demand
Associate/Consultant: Track deadlines, R/R pairing, and feedback. Simple. Linear.
Project Leader: Manage team feedback and DF notes across direct reports.
Principal: Multi-project feedback plus advisee tracking and dossiers.
Partner: All Principal responsibilities plus strategic approval workflows.
MDP: Pre-assignment form access. Firm-wide workload planning.
PA Sponsor: Practice Area Input Forms.
CD Chair: Full MDP access plus strategic CDFA oversight.
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The design challenge
How do you build one interface that scales from a junior consultant's simple task list to a Partner managing feedback across 15 cases and 50 people?
RBCS
I solved it by building Role-Based Context Switching into the information architecture. Each user type saw exactly what they needed. Not more. Not less
Adaptive
The CT Homepage became a dashboard that adapted showing task priorities, upcoming deadlines, team responsibilities, and advisee tracking, all contextual to who was logged in.
Tested
Custom components, all designed to work together. Pinning functionality. Notification grouping. Remove/undo patterns. Clean feedback workflows. Everything was considered, from microcopy to interaction states.
Project to track
Multiple active cases displayed as cards with deadlines and workflow stages. Below: a complete team table showing who needs feedback, due dates, and status
Why it works
Managing 15 cases and 50 people? You need command-center visibility. See bottlenecks instantly.
CDC Meeting
Next CDC meeting date at the top. Below: all advisees with cohort, meeting dates, dossier status, PIF status, and goal setting progress. Everything for career discussions in one place.
Why it works
High-stakes meetings need zero surprises.
Every advisee's status visible, every deadline tracked.
Practice Area
Regional/functional talent view. Shows lead-affiliated members with role, cohort, office, practice area, and progress. PA Contacts can edit; PA Viewers observe only.
Why it works
PA sponsors need firm-wide perspective, not case-by-case details. Role-based permissions keep it clean.
Chapter 3 : My Performance Dashboard
The Career Blindspot Fix
The core issue
Consultants had no idea where they stood. Performance reviews happened in closed rooms. Feedback lived in scattered email threads and buried Workday forms. If you wanted to understand your career trajectory, you had to piece it together from memory, rumor, and whatever your manager remembered to tell you.
The result? Anxiety. Constant "where do I stand?" conversations. People making career decisions blind. And worst of all disengagement. Why chase growth when you can't even see if you're progressing?
The solution
A personal performance dashboard that made career clarity visible, actionable, and motivating.
This wasn't a performance review form dressed up with charts. It was a psychological safety tool, a place where consultants could actually want to see their data because it showed their growth, not just their gaps.
What I built?
I designed a personal performance dashboard that made career clarity visible, actionable, and motivating.
100+ components working together to tell one story: You're making progress. Here's proof.
Feedback tracking
Every piece of feedback received, organized by project and timeline. No more "wait, what did my PL say three months ago?"
Timeliness metrics
Clear visibility into whether reviews were happening on schedule. Accountability for both sides.
Development trajectory
Visual progress tracking that showed where you came from and where you're headed.
Historical comparisons
Growth over time, not just a snapshot. Celebrating progress.
Goal alignment
Connecting performance to actual career milestones.
Why this worked?
People started using the dashboard. Not because they were forced to, but because it answered the question everyone was asking: "Am I on track?"
Engagement with performance data went up. Career conversations became data-informed instead of guesswork. And consultants reported feeling more confident about their development path—because they could finally see it.
Chapter 4 : CD Reports & Analytics
Turning Chaos into Insight
The core issue
Leadership needed to see if the system was actually working. Are people getting feedback on time? Are consultants moving through the pipeline? Where are the bottlenecks?
I designed the reporting layer to answer these questions:
Downward Feedback (DF) Overview : Tracking whether seniors were actually completing feedback. Timeliness percentages. Accountability made visible.
CD Report overview : High-level health metrics for the career development pipeline.
Feedback Timeliness : Did you submit feedback by the deadline? The system knows.
UT Overview : Upward tracking and additional accountability layers.
My Metrics : Individual-level performance visibility.
Why this matters ?
For the first time, BCG leadership could actually see their talent pipeline in real time. Completion rates. Bottlenecks. Which teams were crushing their feedback timelines and which ones were struggling. Data-driven career development management became possible.
The Wins !
After the system shipped (and BCG's Global UX Director called me a "life saviour"—his words, not mine :P
34%
Task completion rates jumped
when people actually understood what they needed to do and got timely notifications.
87%
Feedback timeliness improved
From the old 58%. People were actually meeting deadlines because the system reminded them, tracked them, and made accountability visible.
41%
Support tickets dropped
Why? Because the interface was clear. People knew where to find things. The workflows made sense.
23%
More Consultants confidence
On their career progression and performance feedback (internal survey data). No more wondering "Where do I stand?"
Leadership gained real-time visibility
They can now into pipeline health for the first time. Career development went from a black box to a managed, measurable process.
But my favorite metric ?
Peers kept coming back to tell me they were finally using the system for what it was built for... not as a compliance checkbox, but as the actual operating system for how BCG develops its people.
What I Took Away
Design without requirements is possible
I didn't have a PRD, but I had something more valuable: access to the actual workflows, user pain points, and the screens that encoded the solution. I reverse-engineered the product from the design itself.
Scale requires ruthless prioritization
Seven user types could have turned into seven different interfaces. Instead, I built one system that adapted. That's where the real design thinking happened, not in making everything prettier, but in understanding what each role actually needed and surfacing only that.
Notifications are underestimated
A well-designed notification system doesn't just alert people. It changes behavior. It drives completion rates. It's often the difference between a system people use and a system they ignore.
Internal tools deserve the same design rigor as consumer products
BCG's career development portal touched 25,000 lives. It determined who got promoted. Who got developed. Who was seen. That deserves meticulous design responsive, accessible, clear, and beautiful.
Your users don't care about your constraints
They don't know you didn't have a PRD. They don't know you reverse-engineered this from screens. All they know is: Did you make my life better? Does this actually work? Did you treat me with respect? I succeeded because I answered yes to all three.
And priceless time togather
