Discovery.

Comprehensive industry research coupled with an empathetic, hands-on understanding of our user base, was crucial in discovering value.

We dedicated countless hours immersing ourselves in the environments where the work takes place. Whether navigating active construction sites, dynamic manufacturing facilities, or other hands-on settings, these experiences were vital in helping us identify the points of “process friction” (friction reveals value) within operational workflows. We uncovered a few critical KPI areas that carried immense value across industries.

1. Disconnect Between Management and the Frontline

• Managers typically lack firsthand experience of day-to-day operations, leading to inefficiencies or misaligned priorities.

• Frontline workers often feel disconnected from organizational goals or decisions.

2. Safety and Well-Being

• Hazardous work conditions necessitate stringent safety measures.

• Mental health and work-life balance are becoming increasingly relevant concerns.

3. Labor Shortages

• Aging workforce and difficulty attracting younger generations to industrial jobs.

• Skills gaps due to rapid technological advancements.

4. Cultural Shift

• Modern industrial workplaces must foster inclusivity, collaboration, and innovation to attract and retain talent.

• The incoming workforce will expect & embrace technology.

For the Worker.

We developed a straightforward modular design system (called Core) inspired by familiar tools like a wrench or hammer — practical, efficient, and free from unnecessary complexity. The design ensures the tool does exactly what it needs to without hindrance. By creating something relatable, workers could quickly adapt, become proficient, and master it with ease. Our experience pillars:

• The tool must be task-based and easy to use.

• It should engage workers meaningfully.

• The experience of using the tool should provide clear personal benefits to the user.

• Workers should feel a sense of ownership in how Corvex is integrated into their workflow.

For the Manager.

Managers often need to make quick decisions but may not have all the data, as well as the time to spend hours on the shop floor for various reasons. By designing functionality that promotes transparency and leverages free-form text submissions, we enabled managers to not only see what’s happening on the frontline but also hear directly from workers.

This approach provides insight into frustrations, ideas, and opportunities for improvement — allowing managers to focus more on solving problems and driving results, rather than managing relationships.

1.

Communication and collaboration are EXTRA essential for successful feature development in a start-up.

In a startup environment, things move at lightning speed, and pivots are not just expected — they’re often necessary, no matter how “great” you think your solution is. What helped us evolve and grow effectively was clear and consistent communication and collaboration, both within the team and with existing and prospective customers. This alignment ensures everyone stays on the same page and that the platform's value is regularly evaluated and refined.

Mitigation.

Design Thinking & Focus Groups - I organized and facilitated numerous design thinking sessions with internal stakeholders and conducted multi-level focus groups with the customer base. These sessions were instrumental in uncovering the features that would provide the most value for both the business and every persona in our user base.

Design Systems - Developing a robust design system became one of the most crucial steps in the process. Early on, I realized the importance of moving quickly while presenting customers with high-fidelity, realistic prototypes they could visualize and respond to effectively. This approach enabled rapid iteration and facilitated validation of our ideas both internally and externally.

2.

Both workers and managers have faced frustrating experiences with crappy solutions and operate under the legacy of Taylorism.

3.

Keeping momentum is key and smart behavioral economics integration can be a catalyst.

Users onboarded quickly and almost instantly would create observations around frustrations points and friction. This created a lot of data for managers to handle because those workers hadn’t previously felt equipped to solve the problems they documented. With our tool, fixing problems was encouraged because of the transparency that the lifecycle of the observation created.

Mitigation.

Behavioral Economics - We created functionality around incentives and loyalty that ensured that users were rewarded for participation with points. Every action in the tool could have a point value (or no value) and that gave workers an immediate understanding of where they stood in the operational ecosystem. In short, it poured gasoline on everything.

Change Management - Quickly, we learned that change management was a huge part of the puzzle in these organizations. Workers and managers alike were resistant to change and we developed a roadmap that helped everyone understand the path to operational excellence, which they all were seeking. We called this “The Corvex Journey”.

Delivered an 85% reduction in recordable safety incidents across entire customer base.

Realized 117% increase in catching defects in critical quality production environments.

Returned a 45% increase in asset uptime after adding transparent, cross-functional indicators.

Established 98% adoption rate at an enterprise industrial customer supporting thousands of frontline workers daily.

Park Tool

Park Tool holds a global leadership position in bike tool manufacturing, yet its digital offerings were overly complex and outdated.

Ramsey County

Ramsey County is the second most populous county in Minnesota. The 508,640 people that live there are a diverse group and they demanded an accessible offering.