Skip to Content

Chairlift

CHALLENGE

To lead product design to build a holistic performance management suite of products.

SOLUTION

Build a performance management product that elevates company engagement.

RESULTS

Desktop and mobile applications were shipped and tested in the Human Resources industry.

Traditionally, the process of evaluating and organizing performance had been a messy, not-well-liked and stressful part of business operations. One of the primary problems to solve was to help keep all the moving parts of talent management organized, seamless and transparent. In essence, lower the surprises and stress for not only HR professionals, but all employees across the company.

TOOLS & PLATFORMS

Adobe XD, Figma, Photoshop, Confluence, WordPress

SKILLS & EXPERTISE

Product Design UX / UI Research Analytics

IDENTIFYING THE NEEDS

What’s wrong with HR?

Most Performance Management software focused on 1 to 2 feature sets or solutions, hence not integrated or seamless metrics

Assumption that there is low motivation for non-HR professionals to engage and feed data into the systems

Getting valuable and actionable data is a challenge

Stakeholder Interviews

STAKEHOLDERS

  • Executive Team

  • Marketing team

  • Engineering team

  • Design team

  • Subject matter experts (HR professionals)

  • Third party systems (integrations)

  • Potential Customers / End-users

  • Regulatory structures (app stores)

STAKEHOLDER QUESTIONS

  1. What’s your role with respect to this product?

  2. Who is this product for?

  3. Problem(s) to solve for?

  4. How will it streamline or improve the current process or facilitate a new process?

  5. What is the product vision? Business goals?

  6. What needs to be added?

  7. Start from scratch or leverage API’s?

  8. What should the application be able to do (ie. functionality)?

  9. What is the monetization or business model?

  10. Are there branding and design guidelines that are need to be followed?

Persona Development

INTERVIEWEES

(Assumed potential end-users)

  • HR professionals-primary user

  • Executives

  • Department Heads

  • People Managers

  • Project Managers

  • All other employees

QUESTIONS

  1. What’s your role/job title at your organization?Do you like HR processes and software for Performance Management?

  2. What don’t you like about HR Performance Management processes and/or software (pain- points)?

  3. Could the following tool sets provide value to you and your organization?

  4. Objectives and Key Results (OKR’s)
    - 360 continuous Feedback
    - Coaching (mentorship)
    - Improved Performance Reviews
    - Reporting, Analytics, and Info Graphics, Recognition board

HR PROFESSIONALS

  1. What are you trying to get done as part of your daily tasks? (context)

  2. How do you currently do Performance Management in your organization? (workflow)

  3. What could be better about how you do Performance Management? (opportunities)

IDENTIFYING ROLES and

Feature Sets

HR Admin

Department Head

Reporting Manager (Director level)

Team Manager (people manager)

Employee (standard user)

72% like the idea of Objectives and Key Results (OKR’s)

53% like the idea of 360 Feedback

76% like the idea of Coaching (mentorship)

65% like the idea of improved Review Cycles

94% like the idea of Reporting, Analytics, and Info Graphics

35% like the idea of a Recognition Board

65% of interviewees that work in HR are not satisfied with the processes or software they use.

“How will this dashboard provide value to me? Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly?”

DEFINING REQUIREMENTS

Roles And Permissions

As part of the foundation of the design and evolution of the product, I created a list of user types and requirements, along with feature sets and a permissions matrix. This was an on-going documentation in collaboration with the entire product team.

Info Architecture / Data Mapping

Design Challenges

Create personalized but scalable dashboards for each user type/role.

Data fields and future integrations are unknown.

Find a balance between enough information without overwhelming the user(s).

Need inputs of data to show data...how to gather/show data if we don’t have much data to start with?

Approaches / Solutions

Design modular layouts (responsive design) to allow for scalability and customization.

Leverage existing data as much as possible from other HR systems / API’s.

Onboard with easy and painless experience to input basic data required to build from.

Use data visualization information to clearly communicate.

Flows and Wires

Qualitative feedback

“Layout 2 feels more like other applications I have used.”

“I think layout 3 feels like it would look nice on my phone.”

“Could I customize my dashboard a little bit?”

“How much would I have to manage this dashboard?“

Quantitative feedback

2 / 11 liked Layout 1

6 / 11 liked Layout 2

3 / 11 liked Layout 3

User Testing

QUESTIONS

  1. How long does it take the user to understand the dashboard?

  2. Is the user confused?

  3. How long does it take the user to take action(s)?

  4. Does the user ask questions before taking action?

  5. What are the most common questions?

  6. Where do users ask the most questions?

RESULTS

Usually takes around 5 seconds to start asking questions.

Most users go through tabs first before navigating down the pages…“Whats the data mean and what do I do with it?” Where are the infographics?

“How does the Objectives feature work? That sounds interesting...”

ANALYSIS OVERVIEW

85% users understand tabs and primary navigation structure.

Data labels, interactions, and call-to-actions need to be clearer.

64% perceive layout as modern and clean.

30% Would like to see more info graphics.

A/B Testing / Google Analytics

Feedback and analysis

  • Horizontal scrolling results in more engagement

  • Some users said “to much data, other users said “they need more data” • More tabs and CTA’s result in more clicks/taps

  • Objectives is of high interest to our user base

  • Are high bounce rates a bad thing for our Dashboard?

  • “I left the dashboard in search of more data and reports!”

Design decisions

  • Dig deeper into the amount of clicks and if that is resulting in task completion and value for the user

  • “Objectives“ data and interaction should be explored more and its hierachy on the dashboard

  • Apply these findings to building out Objectives functionality

  • Set target bounce rates based on user types

  • Build out more Reporting and data analytics functionality

Success metrics

  • Focusing on Reporting and Objectives UX resulted in an increased session rate by 8%.

  • Decreased bounce rate from dashboard to 23% during the first week of release (lower then A/B testing).

  • Identified and created design and interaction system for the rest of the feature sets - which was an early goal for dashboard testing.

  • Established 75% TCR after first quarter of product life cycle.

Iterate, improve and ship

Below: Gmail integration flow - we also worked on how to integrate data into existing application workflows.

MORE DELIVERABLE SAMPLES