CASE · RESEARCH + UX · MY PMI

Taking a PMI certification from a line on a resume to career development booster.

Redesigning My PMI so certified professionals could manage and maintain their credentials in one place — and pioneering a social-media credential badge that let members promote their achievements and surface new career opportunities.

Role
Product Research & Design Lead
Organization
Project Management Institute
Product
My PMI
Focus
Research · Focus Groups · UX
+8.1%
PMI membership growth per year over the period
+16.9%
PMP credential holders growth per year
Focus groups
Run with a business analyst to rank redesign features
Social badge
Credential identity built to drive career opportunity
00 At a glance
Research-led prioritization, one new idea, and the iteration discipline to make it real.

My PMI was where members went after they earned a credential — but maintaining it, finding what came next, and proving it to the outside world were scattered. I partnered with a business analyst to run focus groups against a set of candidate features, championed a social-media credential badge as the standout bet, and carried it from wireframe sketches through mockups to a validated, shipped design.

  • 01Worked with a business analyst to run focus groups on a set of potential features to redesign My PMI.
  • 02Originated the social-media profile integration — a credential badge that promotes certification achievements to drive career opportunities.
  • 03Refined the design from wireframe sketches through intermediate mockups into production-ready screens.
  • 04Validated the work with Intuitive Company, whose interviews drove visual-design enhancements as post-launch next steps.
  • 05Supported PMI's sustained growth — +8.1% membership and +16.9% PMP holders per year.
01 Situation
Certified, then on their own — with no single place to manage, maintain, or show a credential.

The Project Management Institute is the global authority behind the world's most recognized project-management credentials. Millions of professionals earn them — but the moment after certification was where the relationship went quiet. Maintaining a credential, tracking PDUs, finding the next relevant step, and proving the achievement to employers each lived in a different tool, tab, or inbox.

My PMI, the member dashboard, was supposed to be that home, but it had grown into a dense, hard-to-scan collection of widgets. It told members what they had, yet did little to make maintaining a credential easier or to help that credential work for them in the outside market — the place where a certification actually converts into career opportunity.

Friction A
Maintenance was scattered

Renewals, PDUs, and standing lived across separate flows, so staying certified took more effort than it should.

Friction B
No outward proof

A hard-won credential stayed locked inside PMI.org with no easy way to broadcast it where careers are made.

Friction C
Too many features, no priority

A long wish-list of dashboard ideas competed for space with no evidence for what members actually valued.

02 Task
Redesign My PMI so a credential is easy to maintain — and worth showing off.

As Product Research & Design Lead, my charge was to make My PMI easier and more effective for members to manage and maintain their certifications. That meant deciding, with evidence, which of many candidate features actually deserved to ship.

The methodology was deliberately research-first: partner with a business analyst to put a set of potential redesign features in front of members through focus groups, rank them by real member value, and let the winners earn their place — rather than designing to the loudest internal opinion. Within that work, I made the case for one feature the data and the market both pointed to: a social credential identity.

“What if your certification could promote you — the way a game or social profile shows off everything you've earned?

The bet behind My PMI's social credential badge
03 Action
From focus-group evidence to a shipped, validated design.
Where it landed — the final design

The redesigned My PMI brought certification status, PDU progress, and a shareable credential identity into one scannable home — the outcome the research had pointed to.

My PMI final design — member dashboard with certification status, PDUs, and credential badge
My PMI final design 2 — profile and personal information
My PMI final design 3 — production dashboard
Fig. 1–3 The final My PMI design — dashboard, profile, and the live production view, with certification management and a social credential badge in one place.
A

Focus groups, run with a business analyst

I treated prioritization as the whole game. Working alongside a business analyst, I assembled a set of potential redesign features and put them in front of members in focus groups. The sessions turned a vague backlog into a ranked, defensible view of what members actually wanted from a certification home — and gave leadership the evidence to fund the right work.

  • Built the candidate feature set. Translated a sprawling wish-list into discrete, testable concepts members could react to.
  • Partnered with a business analyst. Co-ran focus groups so findings were captured rigorously and tied back to business outcomes, not just preferences.
  • Ranked by member value. Used the sessions to sequence features by real impact, surfacing the social credential badge as a standout.
B

The idea: a social credential identity

I originated the concept of social-media profile integration for My PMI: a credential badge that promotes a member's certification achievements outward — the way a PlayStation Network card, a LinkedIn signature, or a Facebook badge advertises who you are. The goal was to make a certification do more than sit on file: let it drive career opportunities by traveling with the member wherever professional reputation is built.

From sketch — the wireframes
My PMI wireframe 1 — registered-user dashboard concept
My PMI wireframe 2 — member view concept
Fig. 4–5 Early wireframes mapping the registered-user and member dashboard concepts.
My PMI wireframe 3 — the badge concept, with PlayStation, LinkedIn, and Facebook inspiration
Fig. 6 The badge concept — social-profile integration inspired by the PlayStation Network card, LinkedIn signature, and Facebook badge, designed to promote achievements and surface career opportunities.
C

Iterate, then validate with Intuitive Company

I refined the concept off the wireframe sketches into intermediate mockups, tightening layout and hierarchy with each pass. We then validated the research with Intuitive Company, who interviewed members and pressure-tested the direction. Their findings became a set of visual-design enhancements — the suggested next steps from the initial launch — that carried the work toward its production form.

The in-between — rough mockup
My PMI rough mockup applying the badge concept to the dashboard
Fig. 7 An intermediate, rough mock-up applying the concept to the full My PMI dashboard — the bridge from wireframe to final design.
PDF Intuitive Company research — evidence of the improvements made  · interviews & visual-design recommendations
  • Refined from sketch to screen. Iterated wireframe sketches into intermediate mockups, then into production-ready layouts.
  • Validated with Intuitive Company. Used independent member interviews to confirm the direction and find what to improve.
  • Planned the next steps. Turned IC's findings into prioritized visual-design enhancements following the initial launch.
04 Results
A certification home that helped PMI's most valuable audience keep growing.
Membership growth
▲8.1%
Average annual growth in PMI membership over the period the work supported
Credential holders
▲16.9%
Average annual growth in PMP credential holders
New capability
Social credential badge

A shareable credential identity gave members a way to promote certifications and open career doors.

Research rigor
Focus groups + IC validation

Member focus groups with a business analyst, then independent validation by Intuitive Company.

Roadmap
Post-launch enhancements

IC's interviews produced a clear set of visual-design next steps after the initial launch.

Why it mattered

Grounding the redesign in member focus groups — and treating a certification as something to show off, not just store — turned My PMI into a reason to stay engaged. The initiative supported PMI's significant, sustained growth: membership rising about 8.1% a year and PMP holders about 16.9% a year, among the audience that had already invested most in the brand.