Helping designers evaluate companies through signals of design culture.
Overview
DesignWell is a self-initiated product I created after struggling to understand which companies actually valued design while applying for roles myself. I launched an MVP, used live feedback and usage patterns to understand where the value really was, and then rebuilt the product into a more credible and scalable v1.
Role
Product Designer/ Founder
Scope
Product strategy, research, UX/UI design, concept validation, launch
Status
MVP launched · V1 rebuilt and launching soon
Why this mattered
Designers care about design culture, but the signals are hard to see from the outside.
Leadership, team structure, portfolio quality, public design content, hiring patterns, and community reputation all matter, but they are scattered across websites, LinkedIn, portfolios, talks, and job pages. For junior designers, the problem is even harder: many do not yet know what signals to look for.
Signals designers look for
Design Leadership
Team Structure
Designers' Portfolio Quality
Public Design Content
Design Hiring Patterns
Community Reputation
What I launched
I launched a focused MVP to test the idea
My first instinct was a Glassdoor-style review tool for design culture. I moved away from that quickly. Reviews felt too subjective, too hard to moderate, and too dependent on scale.
The better direction was a signal-based product: surface the indicators designers already use, and bring them into one place.
I built and launched an MVP using Figma Sites, with company pages structured around leadership, team structure, portfolios, public design content, and hiring activity. The goal was not completeness — it was to validate whether the concept was useful enough to earn attention.
What launch taught me
Launch gave me real signal
The MVP resonated quickly, but more importantly, it revealed where the product needed to become stronger.
400+ visitors in one week
12 designers reached out with direct feedback
6 company submissions from the community
Key Learnings
Jobs showed the clearest demand signal
The submission flow created too much friction
The product needed more scale and clearer evaluation logic
Figma Sites was too limited for a more credible v1
How I rebuilt v1
I rebuilt the product around trust, scale, and clarity
For v1, I moved beyond “can this be useful?” and focused on “can this become credible and scalable?” That led to three major changes:
Rebuilt for scale
I moved the product into Framer CMS so company pages could be added and maintained more efficiently.
Raised the visual standard
I redesigned the product to feel more polished, structured, and intentional — improving the overall UX and giving the platform a level of visual quality that better matched its audience.
Focused on the highest-value workflows
I improved the Jobs experience, simplified the Submit a Company flow, and strengthened the overall structure based on what users responded to most strongly in the MVP.
Built with more scalable tooling
To support this rebuild, I also introduced a more technical workflow behind the product — using AI-assisted information gathering, Supabase for structured data, and code-powered jobs functionality to make updates and live content more scalable.
Home Page
MVP
V1 - Improved visual design, research driven CTAs, additional sections to emphasise product value
Jobs Page
MVP
V1 - Live jobs feed built with job board APIs, improved visual design, filtering
Submit a Company Flow
MVP - Tally form, bring users to a form in a new tab leads to a disjointed experience
V1 - Form opens in a modal. Much less friction, doesn't even go to a new page
Company Pages
Check out DesignWell for yourself
1cianobrien@gmail.com
Made in Framer, with custom code components built with help from Claude.