Workstreams (SaaS)
User Research, UX/UI, Design System
A workflow management app for teams to maximize productivity: Project planning, Time allocation, Calendar views, Kanban boards to boost efficiency
Business goals & success metrics
Operating in a small pond with industry giants like Trello, Asana, Monday.com, etc., the company differentiates itself with its workflow template library, and useful features.
However, acquisition of new users is a prominent challenge; especially due to the high bounce rates from the onboarding, and out of date design. Hence, we chose some of the primary indicators as following:
- the rate of users dropping out during the onboarding process
- retention rates & NSP
- weekly number of tasks & projects created
- conversion rate of premium users
Process
Think
Benchmark Analysis
User personas
Surveys
Atomic Research
Build
Design system
Prototyping
UI design
Check
Measure
Iterate
Strategy &
Research
Double Diamond & Atomic Research
Thoughtful Execution Tree (a form of Double Diamond process that Spotify uses as a framework) lets us;
- go wide in problem identification and hypothesis creation before zooming into a single solution
- prioritize prominent problem(s) to address
- to align on a specific problem(s) with the team
- set specific goals & KPI’s
- discuss impact vs effort so we can pick battles
We also conducted user interviews, online surveys (NPS & SUS), and utilized Sales & Marketing teams’ feedback
Insights
Reduce abandonment rates in onboarding
Through research —incl. interviews, journey mapping, analytics data, benchmark analysis, and more— we found out data to feed the design process. But if “data” is what we learned from the user research, “insights” are why we think that is the case.
Some of the prominent insights were;
- tooltips feel like unwanted advertising popups —which have already created a negative mental model— users instantly want to close them as soon as they see one
- too much information on the landing page for first-time users
- …
Building the Experience
How might we improve the onboarding flow?
Inspired by native advertising, one of our UX hypothesis was “we believe that if the tooltips match the look, feel and function of the rest of the task cards, the close rate will reduce”. Also, if the user just keeps the tooltip without closing it, it might indicate that the task-looking-tooltip is still useful, just saved for the future use
Section with the highest bounce rate (& HMW improve it)
Analytics data showed us that the most common exit page for the first time users is from the right drawer. Even when they stay and continue using the product, there were sections and buttons that were almost never used, or found.
We interpreted these qualitative pain points and came up with potential solutions, and saw tangible results when we made changes to the information architecture
How might we introduce a myriad of features?
Based on the users’ answers during onboarding, we tried recommending features that she might find useful in a designated section
How might we improve discoverability in main navigation?
Through qualitative research we found out that the users are having a hard time finding a taskboard, especially when they are too many. So we aimed to reduce the clutter, introduce proper alignments between design elements, and icons where necessary
“We believe that improving the card structure will…”
Since we discovered overall readability (& discoverability) issues as a user pain point, I changed the card structure to allow for wider task name, better grouped icons, and non-distracting badges. This may seem like small adjustments on a single card, but when the screen is filled with these, it easily becomes heavily cluttered, resulting in a bad user experience
Design
System
HMW create a simple, clear, and scalable design system for designers & developers?
One of my responsibilities was the transition of whole design system to Figma (from a tool called UXPin). I created the whole design system from scratch, with company’s new branding
Business
Impact
%17
decrease in abandonment rate
%23
increase in opened tasks
%5
increase in premium users
+
improved NSP & SUS scores
My role
Our team consists of 15 developers, 1 graphic designer, 1 brand designer, and 2 Senior UX/UI Designers. As one of the senior UX/UI designers, I’m responsible for the design system (and the whole system transition to Figma from UXpin), conducting qualitative & quantitative user research (including Google Analytics, user interview, user testing, etc), user experience (UX), and user interface (UI) design.
Takeaways
- Atoms, Molecules, and Organisms concept in Atomic Design (by Brad Frost) may raise confusion among the team
- A research library such as “Atomic UX Research” is a living organism, not just a one-time deliverable. It’s not a one man job either, so team members have to In order for it to work properly, in time the team members should update with new information regularly, creating a research culture
- Announcing features that are not working properly affects adoption rates in a negative way
- …