What was getting in the way
We built this for the leadership team of a software company, rating how mature their teams are.A maturity ladder is five short descriptions of how well a team does something. They run from "it depends who's in that day" to "we measure it and it keeps improving". Scoring against one ladder is useful. Scoring against twenty is a chore.The first round used a full written form. People read every line of every level and judged themselves against each sentence. It was slow. Three answers came out a level higher than the person running the round expected, and nobody could say why.
Why we went this way
We sketched five ways to get a good-enough answer in under a minute. We dropped two early: a five-by-five grid you had to read in full before you could find your place, and a list of yes-or-no facts that was still slow.We kept two ideas and joined them. Five small pictures, one per level, that you learn once. And one card at a time, so you only ever answer one question: is this us?The first card sits in the middle. "Not yet" moves down a level and "Ahead of that" moves up; neither saves anything. Only "That's us" or "Not sure" counts as an answer. The full ladder text is one click away for anyone who wants to check.
How well it worked
It went live two days after the first sketch, and the review rounds since have run on it. People finish them.We can't tell you it takes a minute. We chose never to time anyone, because people rush when they feel raced. So the minute is what we designed for, not something we measured.
What we'd do differently
Our first version moved you up and down the ladder by itself, using a rule we were quite proud of. In the first test it confused people. Four plain buttons replaced it the next day. We'd start with the plain buttons and add anything clever only when someone asks for it.We also designed it for a phone. Almost everyone did it at a desk at work. And we called the little pictures "marks", which meant nothing to anyone. They're "levels" now.