Company
KualiHigher-ed SaaS
Turning a churning product into a funded bet.
Kuali Ready helped universities write business-continuity plans — but it had churned for two years because it didn't actually help people do the job. Given a part-time mandate to figure out whether to fix it or kill it, I reframed a daunting form into a guided, TurboTax-style experience, validated it with real universities, and earned company investment to build it.
2 yrs
Of churn before the rethink
Guided
A "TurboTax for continuity plans" model
Validated
Tested live with real universities
Funded
Kuali staffed a team to build it
The challenge
Software that didn't help people do the job.
If a disaster struck — a flood forcing hundreds of faculty and students to relocate — would a university know what to do? Kuali Ready was supposed to answer that. But for two years it churned: customers said it "wasn't ready," that it didn't help them get the job done. The existing product was essentially one very long form people were asked to fill out.
The Director of UX asked me to work part-time on a hard question: could this be fixed, or should Kuali scrap it and move the developer and PM elsewhere? My answer had to be evidence, not opinion.
Why it was hard
The real problem wasn't the software.
01
The blocker was culture
Admins couldn't get faculty to finish plans; they ended up hand-holding each one. You can't ship a fix for university culture.
02
Very different customers
From universities with full emergency-planning teams to part-time admins and reluctant "lay" faculty leaders — one flow had to serve all of them.
03
A live "fix it or kill it" bet
The product's survival — and a developer's and PM's roles — rode on whether the rethink validated.
04
Part-time, on top of everything
I was still on the Core team building Kuali's shared identity, workflow, and form tools. Ready was extra.
What I led
Discovery to a validated direction.
A team of three, working remotely and closely: George South (developer), Terri Eikenbary (PM & subject-matter expert), and me.
I personally produced
- Customer discovery interviews and the problem reframe
- Sketches, wireframes, and the guided-flow concept
- High-fidelity Figma prototypes used to validate
I directed
- The discovery plan and who we talked to
- The hypothesis we set out to prove
- The validation tours with universities
I influenced
- The "invest or scrap" recommendation to leadership
- How the team framed success
- The case that earned Ready its funding
The team delivered
- SME depth on continuity planning (Terri)
- Technical feasibility and partnership (George)
- A tight, collaborative three-person loop
Key decisions
The decision ledger.
How a churning form became a fundable product.
The decision
Discovery showed the churn came from culture — faculty wouldn't finish plans — not from missing features. We can't change university culture, so the bet became: make the tool so easy that more plans get finished anyway.
Alternatives
Add more features to the existing form, or blame adoption on the customer and move on.
Evidence
2–3 weeks of interviews with current and former customers: admins hand-holding faculty through a daunting form.
Tradeoff
A harder design problem (rethink the whole experience) instead of an easy one (add fields).
Who
BCP admins and faculty, PM/SME (Terri), developer (George), me.
Result
A problem statement the team could actually design against — and later, prove.
What I'd change now
Define the completion metric we'd measure before redesigning, so the win is quantified, not just felt.
The decision
Replace the long, daunting form with a guided, step-by-step experience — help and clarification at each step — modeled on the ease of doing taxes in TurboTax.
Alternatives
Keep the single-form model and just restyle it.
Evidence
The friction was overwhelm and lack of guidance — exactly what a guided flow removes.
Tradeoff
More design and build complexity than a form, for far lower cognitive load on the user.
Who
The three-person team, tested against real preparers.
Result
A model that made planning feel achievable instead of daunting.
What I'd change now
Prototype the guided model even faster and put it in front of the most reluctant "lay" preparers first.
The decision
Switch from Sketch + InVision to Figma so I could change the prototype live, with the customer, as feedback came in — instead of tediously rewiring hotspots after every layout change.
Alternatives
Stay in the existing tools and batch changes between sessions.
Evidence
The design was changing fast; InVision hotspot rework was slowing the validation loop.
Tradeoff
A tooling switch mid-project, repaid immediately in iteration speed.
Who
Me, in live sessions with university users.
Result
Same-session iteration — changes made and re-tested while the user was still on the call.
What I'd change now
Nothing — this is now how I run rapid validation.
Collaboration & leadership
A small team, a clear bet.
Three of us, remote, worked as one tight loop: I'd sketch on paper or iPad, share it instantly with George and Terri, and we'd move. Terri brought deep continuity-planning expertise; George kept the direction technically grounded. My job was to hold the thread from a fuzzy "why does this churn?" all the way to a validated experience — and to frame the whole thing as a decision leadership could act on.
That framing mattered as much as the design. I didn't just redesign a product; I turned an ambiguous problem into a fundable bet — and the company funded it.
Product evolution
From a long form to a guided flow.
Before — one very long form
Preparers faced a wall of fields with little guidance. Admins had to hand-hold faculty through it, and plans still went unfinished.
Long form→Overwhelm→Admin hand-holding→Unfinished plans
After — a guided, TurboTax-style experience
Step-by-step, with help and clarification where people got stuck. Transparency and clear expectations made planning feel achievable.
Guided steps→Help in context→Clear expectations→Finished plans
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Outcome
What changed.
The hypothesis validated
Guidance and clearer expectations made the plan feel easier and less daunting — and got people moving.
Kuali invested instead of scrapping
On the strength of the validation, Kuali staffed a full-time designer (also PM) and two engineers to build it.
Universities signed up
With the rethink funded and built, more universities signed up and paid for Ready.
A product saved, not sunset
The developer and PM whose roles were on the line kept building — because the bet paid off.
Reflection
What I took from it.
What worked
Naming the real problem (culture, not features) and borrowing a proven mental model (TurboTax) instead of inventing one.
What I'd do differently
Define and capture a completion metric from the start, so the impact is a number, not just a validated feeling.
What I learned
The fastest way to earn investment is to reduce a fuzzy problem to a clear, testable bet — and then test it in front of real users.
How it shaped my leadership
I now treat prototypes as answers to business questions: does this deserve to exist, and will the org fund it?
More of the Kuali story
Ready proved the value of a bet. See the design system beneath every Kuali product — and the deal I helped save.