Culture Economy

Designing a digital experience around a physical one

How Brennan’s workshop became a platform he could scale.

Client
Culture Economy
Role
Solo designer
Platform
Consumer app, mobile-first
Timeline
8 months
The cover of Brennan Burns' Radical Profile card, with his name over a purple gradient.
A Radical Profile card with a surfing photo, six traits, three personal statements, and a section on what brings the person joy.
The Rad Libs form for sending a structured appreciation, with a note that two more unlock custom messages.
The confirmation screen after sending an appreciation, with clapping hands.

What is Culture Economy?

Culture Economy is Brennan Burns’ business, built around his “Radical Appreciation” philosophy: the idea that recognizing people for who they actually are, not just what they do, changes how they show up at work. Participants take a survey, and the platform turns their answers into a personalized “Radical Profile,” a baseball-card-style summary of their strengths, values, and what makes them, them.

Meet Brennan, a totally rad guy.

He’s the kind of person who remembers something specific about you after one conversation, and genuinely means it every time he calls something “rad.” If the software didn’t carry that, it would just be another corporate recognition tool.

He was building each profile by hand.

Before the platform, running Radical Appreciation for an organization meant Brennan personally collecting survey answers from every participant, then building each “Radical Profile” himself, one at a time. That worked for a single workshop. It didn’t work once he was juggling multiple organizations, each one coming back for another workshop every few months.

The platform had to take all of that over: take in survey results, generate a Radical Profile for each participant, and organize people into the groups and organizations they actually belonged to.

One of Brennan’s hand-built profile documents, with sections for how the person likes to be rewarded, receive feedback, and what brings them joy. Personal details are blurred.
Another hand-built profile, with photos of handwritten workshop notes pasted beside the typed answers. Personal details are blurred.
Two of Brennan’s hand-built profiles, down to the handwritten workshop notes. Participants’ details are blurred.

Designing the profile

Collectible cards were the inspiration from the start. The badge, the attribute tags, the whole layout draws from things like Pokémon cards. We wanted Brennan’s Radical Profiles to feel fun and cool, not just another corporate printout.

The cover of a Radical Profile card.
The front of a Radical Profile card with demo content.
The card cover and front, shown with demo content

Turning a rule into a Rad Lib

Brennan’s method starts everyone with structured appreciations and unlocks freeform messages after three. The structure teaches what a meaningful appreciation sounds like and keeps people from freezing at a blank note field.

While designing the send flow, I based the structured version on Mad Libs: pick someone, choose from their top traits, and the app builds the appreciation. I named it Rad Libs and presented it a few sprints in. Brennan loved it, and it made it into the final build. His paper version had shown that some people prefer the formula, so Rad Libs stay available after freeform unlocks.

The Rad Libs form, with a recipient picker, a prompt to fill in, and a trait picker.
A Rad Lib, with two left before custom messages unlock
The custom message form, unlocked, with a toggle back to Rad Libs.
After three, people can switch to custom or keep using Rad Libs
The confirmation screen reading Appreciation sent, That was so rad of you.
“That was so rad of you.”

Making the cards feel physical

Brennan runs his workshops in person, and I wanted people to be able to show their card to whoever they’re talking to. From the home screen, tapping the header in your card’s color opens your full card: cover first, then it flips over to the front.

I built the interaction in HTML, CSS, and jQuery so the developers could see exactly how it should feel. They adapted my code for Angular, and it shipped the way I built it.

Cover first, then the flip

What changed for Brennan.

Building a single profile used to take him hours. Now it takes minutes. What used to work for one workshop at a time can now run for multiple organizations at once. Brennan still does the part only he can do: reading a room, running the workshops, showing up as himself. Everything that used to eat his time around that is just software now.