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Paul Wentzell UX
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Paul Wentzell UX
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Payfactors — First UX Hire to PayScale Acquisition

Payfactors — First UX Hire to PayScale Acquisition

THE PROBLEM

THE PROBLEM

Payfactors had no design foundation, no component patterns, and no UX process. As the first and only designer, every pattern established became the product's design language — built from scratch, used in investor and customer demos before a single line of code was written, and validated when PayScale acquired the platform.

Payfactors had no design foundation, no component patterns, and no UX process. As the first and only designer, every pattern established became the product's design language — built from scratch, used in investor and customer demos before a single line of code was written, and validated when PayScale acquired the platform.

Client / Payfactors

Client / Payfactors

Client / Payfactors

Industry / Human Resources

Category / Human Resources

Category / Human Resources

Team / UX, Product, Engineering

Team / UX, Product, Engineering

Team / UX, Product, Engineering

Role / Sr UX Designer

Role / Sr UX Designer

Role / Sr UX Designer

Tools / Axure

Tools / Axure

Tools / Axure

Timeline / 6 months

Timeline / 6 months

Timeline / 6 months

  • HR Technology

    HR Technology

  • Date Visualization

    Date Visualization

  • Compensation Analytics

    Compensation Analytics

  • Responsive

    Responsive

1

1

3

3

3

Quick

Price

180+

180+

SOLO UX

HIRE

SOLO UX

HIRE

SHIPPED

PRODUCTS

SHIPPED

PRODUCTS

LAUNCHED

AS FREE TOOL

LAUNCHED

AS FREE TOOL

ENTERPRISE CLIENTS

IN 30 DAYS

NEW CLIENTS

IN 30 DAYS

MY ROLE

MY ROLE

Led UX design for Payfactors' core compensation tools — including QuickPrice, a free public product designed solo that contributed to the platform's acquisition by PayScale.

WHAT I OWNED

Payfactors ran on C# and .NET Framework, hosted on Azure with SQL Server for compensation datasets. Angular and React powered the analytics dashboards and QuickPrice interactive views.

HOW I WORKED

High-fidelity Axure prototypes detailed enough to demo as working product — recorded monthly into product preview videos by the Head of Product. Design was the first deliverable, not the last.

THE CONSTRAINT

PayScale acquired Payfactors, combining datasets and algorithms into a unified compensation engine. The interfaces I designed continued to support compensation strategy across the merged platform.

THE CORE TENSION

THE CORE TENSION

Prototypes that sold the product before it existed and survived the acquisition.

At an early-stage startup, design isn't just UX — it's product strategy made visible. The Axure prototypes weren't throwaway artifacts. They closed stakeholders, gave engineering a build reference, and after PayScale acquired Payfactors, QuickPrice continued running at scale across the combined platform.

"Being the first UX designer means every pattern you establish becomes the product's design language. There's no system to inherit — you build the one that ships."

"Being the first UX designer means every pattern you establish becomes the product's design language. There's no system to inherit — you build the one that ships."

PROTOTYPE

PROTOTYPE

QuickPrice

QuickPrice

PROBLEM

PROBLEM

Compensation benchmarking data was regional, lagging, and impossible to trust.

HR compensation data updates once a year, lags behind market movement, and misses emerging job titles. Regional variation compounded the problem — the same role in Boston and St. Louis commands a very different rate. Generic benchmarks couldn't capture that delta.

HR compensation data updates once a year, lags behind market movement, and misses emerging job titles. Regional variation compounded the problem — the same role in Boston and St. Louis commands a very different rate. Generic benchmarks couldn't capture that delta.

OUTCOME

OUTCOME

A free, public tool that became a key reason Payfactors was acquired.

Launched as a fully public free tool — no login required. Intuitive salary benchmarking with regional calibration, fast enough to get an accurate number for any role in any market instantly. QuickPrice became a key selling point in Payfactors' acquisition by PayScale.

PROTOTYPE

PROTOTYPE

Peer Association

PROBLEM

PROBLEM

Compensation data was dirty, regional, and a year behind market reality.

Analysts needed to compare their compensation data against peer organizations — but no structured view existed. Without a clear way to see peer relationships, compensation decisions were made without competitive context.

Analysts needed to compare their compensation data against peer organizations — but no structured view existed. Without a clear way to see peer relationships, compensation decisions were made without competitive context.

OUTCOME

OUTCOME

A structured peer comparison view that scaled across large job libraries.

A two-column comparison view that made peer relationships immediately legible. Filtered out salary-associated jobs to reduce noise. Analysts could benchmark against peer organizations with confidence — no manual cross-referencing required.

PROTOTYPE

PROTOTYPE

Job Ranges

PROBLEM

PROBLEM

Analysts had no confident way to model or compare job ranges across peer groups.

Compensation analysts needed a flexible way to model job ranges across peer groups, but the interface lacked clarity and filtering logic — making it difficult to configure ranges with confidence or compare them across peer sets efficiently.

Compensation analysts needed a flexible way to model job ranges across peer groups, but the interface lacked clarity and filtering logic — making it difficult to configure ranges with confidence or compare them across peer sets efficiently.

OUTCOME

OUTCOME

A single structured view for modeling and validating ranges across peer sets.

A single structured view for modeling and validating job ranges across peer sets. Two-column layout supported quick comparisons and model configuration. Unassociated jobs filtered out automatically — reducing manual effort and giving analysts a clean baseline to work from with confidence.

What I'd do differently

Establish a lightweight design system earlier. As the only designer, consistency existed because I was consistent, not because the system was documented. That worked at startup scale. As the product and team grew, the lack of a formal component library created friction that an actual system would have prevented.