Workfront | Frontline User
Overview
Role: Senior UX Designer
Outcomes: Increased User adoption | Increased Data Hygiene | Decreased Churn
The Product:
Workfront is a project management platform that enables teams to organize assets and resources in order to optimize efficiency.
The Problems:
For Users:
Uncertainty around human resource allocation
Wasted resources
Misalignment around project needs and management data
For Workfront:
Low usage
Inability to present accurate info due to poor data hygiene
High Churn Rate
The Goal
How might we make Workfront valuable to the Front Line users so that their project data would be accurate?
My Process
01. Design Sprint
I was brought on by the VP of UX to be the design lead on this project. My first week was a dedicated Design Sprint from Research and Discovery, through ideation, to Prototypes to testing—all before I even onboarded with HR.
02. Problem Definition
Up until now the tool had been built based off of buyer and project manager feedback. Like many B2B SaaS solutions, our buyers were not our users, and managers had their own needs.
Once we clarified that, we were able to take our research efforts and prototypes to the actual “Front Line Users” who had a very different problem than that of the other personas.
“If I have to choose between doing my job, and doing task tracking that makes my bosses job easier… well I just don’t have time for that.”
03. Ideation
During the Sprint we sketched various ideas based around the concept of making project tracking important and useful to Front Line Users.
How might we enable Front Line Users with better personal time management tools?
If the tool works well for them, the data their managers and companies need will automatically be collected and be more accurate
04. Solution alignment
After testing our conclusions with subject matter experts we agreed that the hypothesis we wanted to test was based around calendars and time management.
Can we make Front Line Users masters of their own project management and availability?
05. Prototype & Testing
We made this prototype in one afternoon so we could start testing it and validating the idea.
Each page had specific things we wanted to learn.
Do users want to interact in a calendar setting? Is a high level view of workload valuable? How manual vs. automatic do they want their schedule to be?
Do users want access to project resources alongside their schedule?
Which tools would users want to integrate with their schedule?
06. Iterating Forward
From the week long sprint it was now a matter of iterating and testing our way forward to an MVP. We iterated and tested everything from typographic hierarchy, layout, colors and micro interactions, to backend optimization and load times.
The PM and myself and occasionally the Engineering lead went on live site visits to existing customers as well as Video call interviews to watch real users experiences with the new product to validate and continue solving Front Line Users’ time management challenges.
Clear organization of projects and capacity at an individual level. These color choices provided the fastest cognitive load while aligning with and informing our brand guidelines.
One click integrations with tools already in use enabled quick setup. Again, our Front Line Users already had work to do, this needed to be a tool, not a project.
Conversations around the product being available in the same experience made communication and alignment smoother, solving another pain point Front Line users had when working with managers.
Project resources organized and managed in the same experience. Integrating with another ongoing project, making sure it was a complete experience for project management.
06. Development & Launch
Having had Engineering involved during the entire process enabled us to continually have their technical feedback as well as their alignment with the current user needs and new UX vision.
I provided hi-fidelity mocks for them to work from along the entire Agile development process and aligned with QA to define success criteria.
07. Impact
Front Line users are now able to have complete control over their timelines and have transparent conversations with their managers around capacity.
↑83%
Increase in Front Line User Data Hygiene
48%
Decrease in Churn
