From Gut Feeling to Growth Engine: Why We Built a New Way to Understand UX Teams

Written by Brady Starr – May 4, 2025

When you run a UX agency, you often get asked the same kinds of questions:

“Can you help our team grow?” “How do we know who to hire next?” “What’s actually holding us back?”

For years, my answer was mostly... vibes.

Don’t get me wrong — we’ve done incredible work with startups, scale-ups, and complex orgs. But deep down, I knew something was missing. We were selling “design” as a service — audits, UI polish, research — when what people really needed was clarity. Something grounded. Repeatable. Sharable.

Something they could take to leadership and say,

“Here’s where we are. Here’s where we’re stuck. Here’s what we should do.”

So we built it.

Brady UX’s Project Uplift empowers design leaders to visualize team strengths, uncover growth areas, and align talent with strategy — fast, human-first, and insight-driven.

🧠 Project Uplift: A Solution, Not a Product

Over the past few months, we’ve been developing what started as a UX self-assessment tool… and quietly transformed into a full-blown strategic growth solution for design teams.

We call it Project Uplift — not because it’s cute branding, but because it literally helps elevate teams.

Built in collaboration with Pavel Bukengolts (UX Design Lab), it’s part diagnostic, part mentorship framework, and part cheat code for team clarity. And we’re proud to say: it actually works.

⚡️ 7 minutes to complete 📊 27-page individual and team-level reports 🎯 Actionable insight within the hour

Early feedback from alpha testers — real design leaders managing real teams — has been energizing:

• “Helped us allocate our team more strategically.”

• “Took the guesswork out of coaching and growth planning.”

• “Honestly? It made me a better manager.”
  

That’s the bar now. Not better performance reviews. Better managers. Better teams.

🛠 What It Actually Does

Project Uplift isn’t another HR tool. It’s built by practitioners, for practitioners, and includes:

• A 100+ question skill scan across UX disciplines

• Individual and team growth maps

• Sprint-based mentorship tracks (via our DoT system)

• Optional coaching, onboarding, or roadmap support
  

And we’re not selling it as a standalone “thing.” This isn’t a new SaaS dashboard or a product silo.

It’s a solution embedded into Brady UX. We bring it in when the work calls for it — just like we would a design audit or stakeholder workshop. It’s one of the most powerful capabilities we offer.

🤲 Why This Matters (For Me)

I’ve spent years freelancing, leading, teaching — doing all the things a “UX person” does.

But until now, everything we sold was intangible. We were helping people feel better about their products, teams, and workflows... but we didn’t always have the artifacts to show for it.

Now we do.

This gives us something clear to hold up and say:

“Here’s what we saw. Here’s what we recommend. Here’s how to grow from here.”

It’s not a gimmick. It’s a system that surfaces what matters, so that everything else — hiring, mentoring, scaling — becomes a little less chaotic.

🚀 Where We're Headed

We're in alpha now. That means:

• We're running it manually with real teams.

• We're listening hard, improving fast.

• We’re keeping it human before we go full SaaS.
  

If you lead a design team, or know someone who does, we’d love to connect. You don’t need a tool. You need clarity. This is one way to get it.

Send us an email at brady@bradyux.com — or just tell us what’s keeping your team stuck right now. We’ll listen. We’ll help.

Brady UX

UX at the speed of business.

www.bradyux.com