How can a consulting diagnostic become a self-serve product without losing its judgment?
A diagnostics platform that runs a structured business assessment, scores it across four domains, and returns a clear circumplex report with strengths, risks, and tailored guidance. No consultant required.
Project frame: MTCC: packaging a consultant's business diagnostic into a self-serve platform
Role
Product Designer & Lead Engineer
Year
2025
Platform
Web · Admin & survey apps
4
diagnostic domains
Leadership, customer focus, organisational health, and operational resilience.
12
scored categories
The consultant's framework becomes a configurable product model.
A4 PDF
board-ready output
Results need to travel beyond the app into consultant and client conversations.
Reconstructed artifact · MTCC diagnostic report
01 — Context
The problem
A proper business diagnostic is rigorous and valuable, but it lives in one consultant's head and their calendar. MTCC needed to deliver that same rigour as a product: configure a diagnostic, send it to a business, and return a credible, branded report without a consultant in the loop for every run.
02 — Evidence
What shaped the direction
Consultant framework mapping
Translated domains, categories, question weights, reverse scoring, and guidance bands into a reusable data model.
Completion risk
Business operators needed autosave, progress visibility, and a single tokenised link to complete the survey in real conditions.
Report comprehension
Users needed the report to lead with strengths and risks before exposing the underlying scoring detail.
Data integrity
Admin results, CSV export, and PDF output had to share one scoring engine so they could not disagree.
03 — Process
How it came together
The brief
A proper business diagnostic is rigorous and valuable, but it lives in one
consultant's head and their calendar. MTCC ("My Virtual Consultant") needed to
deliver that same rigour as a product: configure a diagnostic, send it to a
business, and hand back a credible, branded report without a consultant in the
loop for every run.
Reconstructed artifact · MTCC diagnostic report
The admin portal: the consultant's framework as editable data, with domains, categories, and Likert questions.
A framework, modelled as data
The core move was treating the consultant's framework as structured. Four
domains (Effective Leadership, Customer Focus, Organisational Health,
Operational Resilience) fan out into roughly a dozen categories of Likert
questions, each with weighting, optional reverse-scoring, and narrative guidance
for every score band. Modelling all of it as data means MTCC can build and
version diagnostics, and even import a whole question bank from a spreadsheet,
with no code changes.
Built so people actually finish it
A diagnostic delivers nothing if people abandon it halfway. The runner is a
single tokenised link (mobile-first, WCAG AA, paginated with a progress
indicator) that autosaves and resumes, so a busy operator can answer a few
questions, close the tab, and pick up later on the same link. Submit once,
done.
Reconstructed artifact · MTCC diagnostic report
The report opens on a circumplex, every category at a glance, then strengths, risks, and tailored guidance.
From answers to advice
The report is where it becomes a consultant. It opens on a circumplex (radar)
of category scores, calls out the top-three strengths and bottom-three risks,
and for each category surfaces the narrative tied to the achieved band, so a
leader reads guidance rather than numbers. It prints to a clean A4 PDF and exports
to CSV. Underneath, a shared, tested scoring engine keeps the admin view, the
report, and the export in agreement.
What shipped
MTCC packages a consultant's most valuable hour into a link a business can
complete in one sitting, and a report they can act on the same day.
04 — Craft
Decision trail
01Modelled the consultant's framework as data (Domains, Categories, Likert questions with weighting, reverse-scoring, and per-level guidance) so MTCC configures and versions diagnostics from a spreadsheet, with no code changes.
02A single tokenised link, mobile-first and WCAG AA, that autosaves and resumes so busy operators actually finish it.
03Led the report with a circumplex (radar) of category scores, then top-three strengths and bottom-three risks with tailored narrative, turning raw answers into something a leader can act on, printable to a clean A4 PDF.
04Built one tested scoring engine (weighted means, reverse scoring, results on both 1 to 5 and 0 to 100) shared across the admin view, the report, and CSV export so they never disagree.
05 — Impact
Outcome
MTCC turns a consultant's diagnostic method into a repeatable product that captures answers, scores consistently, and produces a credible report a business can act on.