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The client
First Quantum Minerals (FQM) is a global mining and metals company operating across multiple continents, with thousands of employees working across mine sites, processing plants and corporate functions worldwide. Managing the performance and development of people at that scale - across vastly different roles, locations, connectivity levels and technical abilities - is a serious challenge.
The brief
FQM wanted to move away from a traditional, process-driven performance management system and replace it with something that put people - not procedures - at the centre. The platform needed to handle 360-degree feedback, behavioural assessments and performance scoring across the entire organisation, while being genuinely usable by everyone from the CEO to a mine captain in Zambia.
The client's ambition was clear from the start:
"We have huge ambition. We are about to take the organisation through a further ambitious transformation. It is now critical we deliver superb products and execute flawlessly."
Senior stakeholder, First Quantum Minerals
Our role
Bravand led all pre-build activity as design and strategy partner to Genisys Software, who handled the technical development. Our scope covered everything up to the point a line of code was written:
- Stakeholder interviews and user research
- User persona development across the full range of FQM roles and location
- Service design and information architecture
- UX design across all user journeys
- Full UI design and a bespoke design system
- Functional specifications and design handover for development
The design challenge
FQM's workforce is genuinely diverse in every dimension that matters for design. A CEO using a Microsoft Surface Pro in a boardroom in Perth has completely different needs, context and tech literacy to a mine captain running a team of 18 on a site in Zambia, likely on a Windows desktop running IE11 with intermittent connectivity.
We developed detailed user personas across the full stakeholder spectrum - from Philip Pascall (CEO) to frontline mine supervisors and training officers - capturing not just role and tech context, but how each person would think, feel and act when using the platform. This research directly shaped every design decision that followed.
The existing system was task-focused, process-focused and assessment-focused. The brief was to make it people-focused, development-focused and emotionally intelligent. That's a significant design shift.
What we designed
The platform - known internally as FQM Assess - had three connected modules:
The Triptych dashboard
Each user's entry point to the platform: a three-panel personalised view showing their behavioural scorecard, performance scorecard, and peer feedback at a glance. Designed to load with the user's own data front and centre - making the platform feel like it's about them, not about process.
360 peer nomination tool
A custom interface allowing users to identify and select colleagues to provide feedback - with smart suggestions based on reporting relationships and collaboration history, and a simple search for anyone outside those suggestions. The flow was designed to be fast and frictionless, with clear guidance at every step.
People Review Room
A powerful management tool allowing senior leaders to view, filter and shortlist talent across the organisation - by site, department, job level, behaviour and performance scores. The tool included both a list view and an interactive scatter chart plotting performance against behaviour scores across the workforce. Shortlisted individuals could be compiled into presentation-ready talent review documents directly from the interface.
The outcome
The platform launched across FQM's global operations, replacing a system the organisation had outgrown with something built around how their people actually work. The design was grounded in genuine user research, stress-tested against a wide range of real user types, and built to represent FQM's own behavioural framework - Bolder, Smarter, Together, Driven - not just assess against it.
The client's response on handover said everything:
"Your ownership right from the get-go gave us much confidence. Seizing the initiative is something we value very much - you role modelled that."
Senior stakeholder, First Quantum Minerals
Designing an enterprise platform that needs to work for everyone?
This project is a great example of what happens when deep user research meets genuinely ambitious design. Talk to the Bravand team about what you're trying to build.
