Designing Pivotal Practice an AI Roleplay Experience for Manager Growth

About Praxis Labs

At Praxis Labs, we’re on a mission to make workplaces work better for everyone.

We’re an AI-powered learning platform that helps people build the critical human skills needed to succeed and lead in today’s workplace.

By combining coaching, roleplay, and skill assessment, we help organizations develop more engaged, high-performing teams.

About Pivotal Practice

Pivotal Practice is an AI-powered learning experience that helps managers safely practice difficult workplace conversations.

By combining coaching, conversational roleplay, and feedback, it provides a safe space for learners to build confidence and strengthen critical skills like feedback, empathy, and communication.

role

I led product design for Pivotal Practice from discovery to delivery. I partnered with product, engineering, and learning teams to guide research, design, prototyping, and usability testing. 

Team

Product Designer
Product Owner
2 Learning Designers
2-3 Software Engineers
1 QA Engineer

Responsibilities

User Research
Visual Design
Product Design

design process

Discover

Define

Develop

Building on 1.0 research and feedback, we ran targeted discovery with client design partners and internal audits to refine the product vision

Aligned on core problem framing and success metrics; prioritized design goals for voice, coaching, and learner experience consistency

Rapid prototyping and weekly design sprints with continuous stakeholder feedback to improve the core learner experience

Deliver

Beta launched with design partner clients (Jan 2025), followed by general availability (April 2025) with a completely new platform + 14 scenarios

01

Discover

The Problem

Leadership training often fails where it matters most—real-world application.

  • Too much theory, not enough practice

  • Hard to scale across learners and clients

  • No easy way to measure if people were improving

We needed an immersive, scalable, and measurable solution.

02

Define

The Challenge

We built an immersive, scalable, and measurable solution with Pivotal Practice 1.0.

  • The product resonated but had limits:

  • Clients wanted more variety and org-specific customization

  • Learners expected more dynamic, responsive interactions

  • Content creation was slow, relying on manual scripting and voice acting

Our Approach

For Practice 2.0 (Project RAWR), we

  • Used GenAI to speed up content creation and personalize learning

  • Made conversations feel more dynamic and real

  • Tested ideas fast, learned quickly, and built a scalable immersive learning experience

03

Develop

Evolving the Experience

Concept Validation

Product Refinement

Scenario Expansion

Tested early prototypes with buyers and clients to validate core experience flow and solution (setup, voice vs. text, feedback).

Fast 1–2 week design–build–test cycles. Usability tests with success targets:

  • 70%+ easy to follow

  • 70%+ skill recall

  • 60%+ confident applying skills

  • 80%+ psychological safety

  • 70%+ positive emotion

  • 40%+ very disappointed if removed

Tested the experience across leadership challenges, expanding from feedback on communication to performance coaching and leading team change.

Intro Page

Early testing showed our first intro page didn’t give learners enough context. They felt unclear about the conversation goal and how to know when they had finished.

We redesigned it to better prepare them without overwhelming.

  • Outlined the scenario and coaching goal

  • Explained which skills they would practice and why

  • Used clear, supportive language and reduced distractions

  • Helped learners enter the simulation with more confidence and less anxiety

Skills Pages

We added a Skills Preview step so learners could see 2–3 key behaviors they’d practice. Early designs let users skip this, but many who skipped felt confused.

We changed the flow to make reviewing skill pages required.

  • Provided skill purpose, plain-language description, and example

  • Allowed experienced learners to quickly tap through if they wanted

  • Prevented frustration by giving everyone a consistent preview

  • Managers liked the quick refresher before starting conversations

04

Deliver

Our Approach

For Practice 2.0 (Project RAWR), we

  • Used GenAI to speed up content creation and personalize learning

  • Made conversations feel more dynamic and real

  • Tested ideas fast, learned quickly, and built a scalable immersive learning experience