Performance AI
AI SaaS platform transforming performance reviews
Performance AI is an AI-powered HR SaaS platform owned by Lion Holdings, built for tenant admins, HR leaders, managers, employees, and C-suite committees to run performance reviews, calibration, and talent decisions in a single system. As lead product designer, I owned the 0 → 1 design of every surface and design system, from brand identity to role-specific dashboards, assessment creation, reports, and the UX layer translating complex AI evaluation logic into decisions stakeholders could trust.
The Challenge:
Performance review software remains one of the most disliked categories of enterprise tooling, burdened by fragmented workflows, rigid templates, and scoring logic that employees and managers rarely trust. Performance AI set out to rebuild the category around AI-assisted calibration, which meant four distinct user roles each needed their own workflow while the underlying design system held together as one coherent product. The design had to make AI-driven scoring defensible to executives and transparent enough for employees to accept.
The Strategy:
I partnered daily with the CTO, Director of Engineering Chris Gonzalez, a full-stack developer, and a Scrum Master to move from concept to shipped product in four months. I designed four role-specific experiences (tenant admin, HR, manager, employee, committee) around a shared set of reusable patterns, preventing the product from fragmenting as scope expanded. Every surface touching AI output, from live evaluation to calibration to assessment creation, was built with transparency and researcher-style auditability as first-class requirements, ensuring stakeholders could trace every score back to its inputs.
The Outcome:
Performance AI shipped end-to-end in four months, covering tenant onboarding, organization and role management, cycle creation, assessment and template builders, role-specific dashboards, reports, and AI live evaluation. Projected revenue reached $576K within two months of release, with a projected trajectory of $10M by end of year 2026. I established the brand identity and a scalable design system that now underpins every surface across the product, setting the foundation for how Lion Holdings approaches future AI-native enterprise tooling.
