Intro

A Rare Moment Materializes

In 2024, a rare window opened at USANA to unlock one of the most important metrics for an Associate: Commissions. That window could have closed quickly with a surface-level fix, and many people were itching to do just that. But I knew we needed to dive deeper to deliver the kind of polished experience our Associates had been lacking.

What followed was a rigorous journey to understand how commissions worked across all of USANA’s 24 global markets, and an experience that gave Associates the clarity they had always deserved. When it was done, USANA never saw its internal complexity the same way again.

Hifi

Every Detail Accounted For

We had the map, the logic, and a team that understood what we were building toward. I had intentionally explored past the limits of our current capabilities and was excited to refine every last detail.

But there was a worry underneath that excitement too: I didn’t know how much we’d actually be able to build.

Hifi was the gauntlet that would decide what would stay and what had to wait. Communicating regularly was key to making every variant, every message, and every CTA solid. Any adjustments or additions to the system needed to hold up not just visually but against the logic we’d spent weeks mapping. The result was a lot of variants. 👀

Since the required variants had already been mapped in previous phases, this phase was about giving them form. The card system was strong, so instead of exploring other options, we explored the structure and styles inside.

With a stable design in place, I connected with our content writer to establish specific messaging for each variant. Getting them to match their weight required the same rigor we’d applied to everything else. These words were the thread connecting the map to the Associates it was built for.

Constrained But Not Compromised

But not everything we designed could be built for launch. The clearest example of this was the messaging and CTAs for unqualified Associates. Before this project, they had little visibility into their qualification status, and even less guidance on what to do when their status changed unexpectedly.

However, in almost every case, everything they needed was well within their grasp; we just needed to give it to them.

After all, this was the purpose of making the messaging and CTAs visible. But after further validation, we realized that the technology to support all the variants wasn’t ready yet. 🫠 Fortunately, the map was built to be flexible, and we had everything we needed to quickly adjust.

It wasn’t the ideal, but it wasn’t a surrender either! I documented both versions, not to complain, but because ideas that don’t launch aren’t dead, they’re waiting. Documenting them clearly meant the conversation didn’t start from scratch. And sometimes, when people can see past the current constraints, they won’t just dream bigger, they’ll build.

Designing Beyond The First Impression

Sadly, UX Research at USANA was still an afterthought for many projects. 🥲 But one of our amazing UX Researchers reached out anyway, and I needed it. I was stuck in an iteration loop and couldn’t pinpoint what to change. Without a budget or official inclusion, we ran scrappy tests with a few employees who had relevant domain knowledge. Not a perfect sample, but real people reacting to real designs.

Making the commission text bolder solved the first issue, but the banner blindness was more challenging. We explored swapping with badges, but they still risked becoming visual noise that would get tuned out. Not knowing what to do, I set up a review with the full UX team and they had exactly what I needed.

I’d been treating the banner and the badge as competing solutions, one or the other. It was during the review that someone connected the dots I had missed: what if both existed together? The banner would appear and stay for a limited time when commission status changed; once stabilized, the badge would take over. Prominent when it matters and quiet when it doesn’t. A banner system designed to make banner blindness irrelevant.

We weren’t designing only for the first time a user would see this. We were designing for the tenth, or even the fiftieth. However many times an Associate needed commission info, we’d be there. Communicating clearly and providing next steps.

By this point, the three core elements we’d been building toward the whole time were more clear than ever:

• At-a-glance qualification status, amount, and next pay date
• Relevant messaging for every scenario based on the logic we’d mapped
• Contextual CTAs to help Associates either explore or unblock themselves

These 3 things didn’t show up out of nowhere. We earned them.

Remix

Building Systems Over Solutions

As the year wrapped up, company priorities shifted toward an aggressive new initiative. The commission project got folded in with a much tighter timeline than anyone had planned for, and we scaled back to match. Months of work suddenly reduced in scope is the kind of thing that can feel like a defeat.

But it wasn’t a defeat. Because we’d built a foundation, not just a feature.

The decisions we made, the documentation we created, the commission logic that was finally mapped and visible. All of it positioned USANA to be flexible with the launch while staying focused on what it would eventually become. That’s the difference between solving the immediate problem and solving the underlying one.

Outro

The Firsts Nobody Planned For

The scaled back launch didn’t diminish what we’d built. If anything, it made the firsts we achieved more remarkable.

For the first time, USANA had something better than documentation: it had a detailed map of how commissions worked across all 24 markets. But the best part? What USANA was able to do with the map. It created a shared language for stakeholders, developers, and anyone else who needed a peek behind the curtain, and that language changed something. It turned what had felt impossible into something worth building together: an experience for Associates that finally gave them the power to understand and act on their commissions.