Lvlup: Transforming CVs into Career Intelligence

Product Designer | End-to-End Design | 0 → 10,000+ Users

Lvlup transforms static career documents into personalized, actionable intelligence. Upload your CV, and our AI analyzes your skills, experience, and trajectory to provide market-calibrated assessments, career pathways, and AI-impact strategies.

My Role:
End-to-end product design, AI/ML collaboration, prompt engineering, information architecture, user research & activation testing

Team Composition: 1
Designer, 1 ML Engineer, 1 Full-Stack Developer

Timeline:
July 2025 - Present

The Problem
Professionals are flying blind in their careers

Existing career guidance falls into two buckets: generic advice that applies to everyone, or expensive coaching that doesn't scale. Meanwhile, professionals face real anxiety about their market position, skill gaps, and whether AI is coming for their job.

The consequences:
Missed growth opportunities
Misaligned skill development
Anxiety about AI disruption
Career stagnation despite potential

The design challenge:
How might we transform overwhelming career data into personalized, actionable intelligence that empowers confident decisions?

This is where Lvlup comes in
Lvlup: AI-Powered Career Intelligence

Lvlup transforms static CVs into comprehensive career intelligence reports—typically 80-100+ pages of personalized insights. Upload your career history, and our AI analyzes your skills, experience, and trajectory across 12 interconnected sections:

Your Journey So Far

• Skills Assessment: All your competencies rated against market benchmarks

• AI Impact Analysis: Which skills are at automation risk and how to evolve them

• Skills Distribution: Your professional skill balance

• Transferable Skills Analysis: Industries where your skills translate

• Role Progression Analysis: Your career phases and predicted next moves

• Your Differentiators: Unique combinations that set you apart

Your Future Career Mapping

• 3-5 Career Tracks:
  Distinct career tracks with success probability scores, compensation progression, work life balance analysis, skill gap breakdown, jobs and courses to help you progress in this track

Your Action Plan

• Actionable Career Development Plan: Personalised next steps across 5 focus areas

The Business Model:
Freemium. Generate a preview report for free, unlock full insights with a one-time payment.

🔗 Try it yourself → lvlup.kalido.me

For the sake of this case study, we'll focus on five core sections:

1. Role Progression Analysis

2. Skills Assessment

3. Skills Distribution

4. Transferable Skills Analysis

5. AI Impact Analysis

These sections best illustrate the design challenges we faced—transforming dense career data into actionable, personalized insights.

The Solution Architecture
How a Lvlup report is generated

1. Upload CV → Users upload their resume, import from LinkedIn/Kalido, or build one from scratch using our AI-powered resume builder.

2. Preview & Verify → Users review the extracted data to ensure accuracy before generation.

3. Set Preferences → Users specify location preferences (for salary benchmarks), target roles, and career aspirations. The AI uses these to tailor recommendations.

4. Generate Intelligence → Our AI analyzes the CV and preferences to produce a comprehensive career report across multiple modules.

This case study covers the full product design. For a deep-dive into how we solved the freemium activation problem specifically, see Designing Trust →

Our First Attempt
Our initial approach: Show everything

Five modules of career intelligence

1. Skills Assessment — Market-calibrated ratings with transparent methodology

2. Skills Distribution — Your professional DNA and archetype

3. Transferable Skills Analysis — Cross-industry opportunities

4. AI Impact Analysis — Risks and evolution strategies

5. Role Progression — Past phases, future paths

The logic seemed sound

• More data = better personalization

• Detailed percentages = clear patterns

• Comprehensive analysis = higher perceived value

But here's what our users had to say to that

"It's comprehensive but overwhelming"

"I see where I am but not where to go"

"The AI section scared me"

"It feels like it could apply to anyone"

Here's what we learnt from V1
The problems we discovered in the report sections

Skills Assessment
Users saw the numbers but kept asking "So what?" or “Why” The ratings rated their experience (mirror) but didn't show them what to do next (window) or how we arrived at the score

Skills Distribution
Information overload. Users couldn't remember 8 categories or act on percentage breakdowns. Too much analysis, no clear direction.

Skills Transferability
Overwhelming detail. Users got lost in percentages and couldn't identify which industries to actually pursue. Analysis without direction.

AI Impact Analysis
Created panic. "40% of your skills at critical risk!" led to anxiety, not action. Too much threat, not enough opportunity.

Role Progression
Not everyone follows linear career paths. Career pivots, specialists, and portfolio careers didn't fit. The framework felt generic.

And here's how we completely transformed each module in the next iteration,

Skills Assessment → Transparent Scoring
Added clear methodology: "Scores reflect CV evidence, not full capabilities." Users understood why they got each rating and how to improve it.

Skills Distribution → Archetype System
Simplified the skill brackets to "core" vs "supporting", added memorable professional identities. "You are a Craftmaster" became a badge users wore proudly.

Skills Transferability Analysis → Industry-spcific guidance
Recommended specific industries relevant to the users skillset and experience, included their unique value propositions and the transition strategies for each industry.

AI Impact → Evolution Roadmap
Shifted from "X% of your skills at risk" to "Here's how your skills will transform." Paired every risk with specific evolution strategies.

Role Progression → Flexible Phases
Replaced linear model with 10 flexible phase types (Foundation, Growth, Leadership, Strategic, Innovation, Specialization, Transformation, Portfolio, Executive, Advisory) that could appear in any order.

We transformed data into narrative, analysis into action, anxiety into ambition

• Time on report: 3 min → 25 min

• 30-day return rate: 12% → 65%

• Users reached: 10,000+ in 90 days

What changed: Users didn't just read their report—they used it to change their careers. The archetype system became a shared vocabulary. People referenced their Lvlup insights in job interviews and LinkedIn profiles.

The Reframe
From data to narrative, from analysis to action

Four principles emerged that made V2 a success

Information ≠ Intelligence
Users don't need all the data. They need the right data as a coherent narrative.

Identity > Analysis
Memorable archetypes ("Craftmaster") had 10x more impact than percentage breakdowns.

Fear Motivates, Hope Activates
Risk warnings created paralysis. Reframing as evolution opportunities drove action.

Progress Needs Triggers
Generic advice doesn't move people. Specific, measurable next steps do.

Try Lvlup yourself → See the product in action

Want the full story?

This is the compressed version. The complete case study includes:

• Detailed user research insights and methodology

• Full breakdown of each module's design evolution

• Technical deep-dive into AI/LLM collaboration and prompt engineering

• Extended metrics and business impact analysis

I would love to walk you through all of it! Lets talk