Introduction
In the new Bridge perform app. Receiving constant feedback was one of our main goals. Instead of just having a 360 review yearly.
In the new Bridge perform app. Receiving constant feedback was one of our main goals. Instead of just having a 360 review yearly.
Perform needed a way to gather feedback to help employees improve. This insight also should give the HR Admin managers insight to where training and hiring can be applied.
I was tasked to lead out this feature work alongside my product manager counterpart.
I knew that in order for us to be successful, we would need to follow a design process that would enable us to deeply understand the user’s needs, validate, and iterate. Here are the steps we took in this project.
At Instructure we are always working together in our product teams. I collaborated closely with a product manager over the program authoring feature in Bridge. Together we brainstormed and whiteboard through several different possible solutions to this problem.
To kickstart this project, the product and UX team gathered together for an iterative design session. As a product team, we laid out the core problems to be solved within the existing program creation tool. Each designer then individually sketched or wrote out as many ideas as possible within a given amount of time. Coming back together we explored each concept one-by-one, finding connections, and looking for ways these ideas could solve help solve the problem. We identified three main points of views
From our initial interviews and brainstorms we had developed our assumptions around who we were designing for.
Admin Experience
Admin need a way to configure skills and the way employees are assessed.
They all so needs to see data, analytics and insights in order to strengthen employees through training or hire employees to fill gaps.
Employee Experience
An employee needs to be able to self assess, request an assessment from peers in order to see where they are, what they can improve on and how to grow.
Managers Experience
A manager needs the ability to assess and request assessments from the team about individual members on the team. View the insights and data and see how they can strengthen their team through training or where to hire.
Bridge was highly collaborative and we held weekly design reviews with both the design and product team helped us with outside perspective. Sometime being on a project long enough starts to introduce bias.
Meeting with customers really helped us simplify what we were creating.
I created a robust prototype using sketch and invision to test out our designs with the users. We got mixed reviews from different customers, but what they all agreed upon was that it needed to be simple. For the author feedback we received was that it was too complex. We had customers threaten to not renew their contracts. We went back to the drawing board
After simplifying the authoring and learning experience quite a bit we landed on a solution that resonated with our users. In fact we were able to design, prototype and test with all our customers that were at risk of not renewing in september and made them happy enough that we were able to retain 100% of our existing customer while picking up some new customers.
I believe that a smooth handoff and tight collaboration with development is crucial to the success of every product. Knowing that this was a very large feature, I wanted to be as prepared as possible. Once we had further validated our design solution I went to work fleshing out every detail of the experience I could think of. I met with our development team to review the designs and get input on technical considerations, and then put together a comprehensive set of specifications to accompany the mockups and clickable prototype. This is an approach I regularly take, and has helped me time and time again streamline development and ensure a higher level of visual and interactive quality.
Our final design was an immersive dual-path experience, leading the author to create simple yet powerful learning paths which allowed the learner to see exactly what they needed to learn and a path that would help them accomplish their goals.
A simple authoring experience that allows an author to quickly create a program outline and easily add learning objects
Add learning modules and create sections to break up content without being restrictive.
I created a few illustrations for things like empty states and icons to help users with context and progress.
As learners take a program it is important. Creating an intuitive and accessible learning experience for users where ever they might be.
We all know that training can be disruptive and take employees away from their real responsibilities. We made sure that learning was easy for our users. Helping them know what is on their plate, what needs to be done, inorder to get back to their real work.
