Midmarket solution: Assess Standard
Self-service policy building
Through customer research, I found that most of our midmarket customers have pre-existing policies but feel like its “too heavy-handed” to navigate our policy builder product and add their policies into Assess.
Assess Standard serves midmarket employers who want more configurability than SMB customers but don’t need the full complexity of enterprise controls. These customers value autonomy and want to fine-tune policy logic themselves.
What I designed
Adjustable rule controls that allow editing thresholds, categories, and decision logic.
Smart defaults + editable templates to balance speed with customization.
Clear rationale explanations to build trust in each configuration choice.
Why it matters
Midmarket teams can self-configure without support, reducing time-to-value and strengthening the quality and consistency of hiring decisions.
Heuristic audit of current Assess product
I started by identifying what we need to address with our current Assess product to better meet midmarkets needs. I found that Assess Premium has:
Information overload: 235 charge categories exposed simultaneously
Technical language: Many of our terms confused employers
No guidance: Customers felt lost configuring their policies
"I have no idea what to do here. I understand you can't give us advice—but some sample rules might have been helpful." —Instawork customer
Design explorations
The midmarket tier needed to feel accessible while maintaining power for complex policies.
Wizard-style setup ❌: Step-by-step flow was determined too restrictive for mid-market needs
Show disabled categories behind paywall ❌: Greying out Premium capabilities available after upsell was found to overwhelm customers
Collapsed categories of what’s configurable ✅: Show collapsed categories of only what’s configurable found to be the most approachable and understandable
Key design decisions
Show less categories and focus on qualifying instead of disqualifying candidates. 8 concept tests confirmed this approach. Users felt "guided but not limited" and setup time dropped from 4-6 weeks to 4 days.
Design visioning & tradeoffs
My initial explorations included using employers' historical adjudication data to recommend policies on their top 5 reviewed charges. This tested well but was deprioritized to focus on new customer acquisition. In hindsight, I would have:
Fought harder for this feature's inclusion in MVP
Run a smaller experiment with 10 existing customers to prove conversion lift
Proposed it as a Premium-only feature to drive upgrades
Learning: Data-driven personalization has exponentially more impact than static templates, even when targeting new customers.
Impact
Adoption: 248 paying customers within 18 months (73% of target segment)
Efficiency: Setup time dropped from 4-6 weeks → 4 days (94% faster) Usage: 70% average reduction in manual review time
Revenue: $4.2M ARR from this tier alone Retention: 92% annual retention (vs. 85% industry average)
"This would have taken us months to set up with our old vendor. We were live in three days." — Hawx Services