Design extension: Culture Booster
TL;DR: A brief project overview
A local startup sought out our services to produce a design extension with consideration to the company’s development budget. Keeping in mind the company’s mission and their users’ goals, I suggested new product features in the form of high fidelity annotated wireframes. The methodology I used to inform this design included: competitive analysis, user journey maps, Kano analysis, rapid prototyping, and low and high fidelity annotated wireframes.
The client
Culture Booster is a Minneapolis based startup organization on a mission to improve people’s work lives. They offer employee engagement software that allows users to share feedback, improve collaboration, make goals, and capture innovation within their organizations.
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The goal
Culture Booster would like us to provide high level feature suggestions for the software. They need us to pitch the most effective solutions to improve user experiences while staying within their development budget.
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The team
Stephanie Lenertz , Annie Kaune, Amiee Lee, Ia Xiong
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The tools
Figma / FigJam, Excalidraw, Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Office Suite, Google Suite
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My roles
UX Researcher, UX Designer, Prototyper
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Methods
Design Thinking, Affinity Diagramming, Journey Mapping, Feature Conceptualization, Rapid Prototyping, Data Synthesis, Wireframing, User Stories and Scenarios
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Deliverables
Competitive Audit, User Journey Map, Feature Concepts, Kano Analysis, Feature Suggestions and High Fidelity Annotated Wireframes
Understanding the product
Just like the first sentence of an essay or the first line in a sketchbook, the first step in the design process is usually the hardest! Because Culture Booster’s primary goal was to receive ideas for new features, my team and I decided to start with a competitive analysis. We examined what services Culture Booster and five of its leading competitors offered. This contextualized the product for us, offering high level insights regarding how Culture Booster compares to the market.
After we collected the information, we utilized affinity diagramming to categorize the data. Notable features Culture Booster does not currently offer include recognition, incentives, social interactions, employee feedback, and software integrations.
Imbuing empathy in the design process
Next, it was time to take a deep dive into the software from the user’s perspective.
To make sure the user was always at the center of my choices, I created a user story and user scenario.
Meet Remi!
Remi has been a manager at her organization for four years. She loves the mission of the company and the people that work there, but has noticed consistent issues with morale among the employees. Remi and her coworkers often feel unheard and unappreciated for their hard work. She heard about Culture Booster from a friend and wants to see if it will help.
User Story: As a manager at a fast-paced non-profit organization, I want to find a tool to help improve morale and communication in our workplace so that I can enjoy an enhanced work culture and increased engagement from my coworkers.
With my new best friend Remi in mind, I built a journey map that represented her experience with Culture Booster.
Conceptualizing features
The journey map provided me some great insights about what might enhance Remi’s experience. Based on areas for improvement identified in the competitive analysis and the journey map, I quickly sketched out five feature designs I thought would be a great addition to the product:
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Specialized surveys
Culture Booster’s main goal is to improve people’s work lives. But employees can’t fix problems if they aren’t aware of them! Currently, sending out a survey requires users to add questions one at a time. I proposed a feature to speed up that experience: offer the user specialized surveys based on length and subject.
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Survey recipient customization
Users do not currently have the ability to choose who their survey is sent to. This feature grants the user freedom to choose recipients based on department, employment level, job type, and/or location.
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STARs homepage
Our comparative analysis concluded that 5 out of 5 of Culture Booster’s top competitors have a feature for employee recognition. This homepage design offers users the ability to send and receive appreciation within their company.
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Sending and receiving STARs
Employees will be able to send and receive stars using modals that contain all the information they need, as well as a cute little illustration. Who doesn’t love a cute little illustration?!
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STAR reminder
The client emphasized the importance of making sure that recognition ‘sticks.’ Including the option to remind someone of a STAR they were previously sent will keep morale up and positivity in circulation.
Let’s be realistic…
As designers, we can sometimes get swept away into a world of limitless fanciful feature concepts! But we can’t get everything we want! Culture Booster, like any company, has limited resources, and I wanted to make sure they got the most bang for their buck.
My team and I met with Culture Booster’s lead developer to figure out what was feasible for this round of design. We each presented our designs to the developer and they provided a point estimate to signify how long it would take. With 1 point equating to 1 day (8 hours) of development work, the total budget for this sprint was 20 development points.
Meeting with the development team provided invaluable information about the limitations of the designs. I learned which components of the website were easy to reuse in new features (therefore decreasing the developer point estimates) and which features would take longer than expected. Later on in the design process, these figures helped me weigh the designs’ cost versus their benefits.
When in doubt… ask the users!
Between me and my team, we had more wonderful options than we could afford to develop! To narrow down our focus, we decided to perform a Kano analysis. We selected ten feature concepts that were most indicative of our ideas and surveyed them with seven current Culture Booster users.
Once we collected the results, we synthesized them onto a Kano evaluation table and digitized them in FigJam. To provide the client an easy-to-understand visual model, I plotted our results on the Kano model graph.
Within the data, there were no must-have features that were missing— all features fell into the categories of attractive, performance, or indifferent. This meant that, if we focused on building performance and/or attractive features, we could really delight the users!
Next, my team and I ranked the features based on user response. Using quantitative data and majority rule, we identified which features were most important to users.
The results were in! Recognition and employee feedback ranked the highest. If you take a look back at the journey map, that is also an area in which Remi felt dissatisfied. With these insights, it was time to start prototyping.
Suggestions and wireframes
Based on all the data I’d collected thus far, I decided to focus on the two features that ranked the best in the Kano analysis: recognition (STARs) and employee feedback (Suggestions.)
STARs (9 development points total):
Implement a feature for employees to send and receive recognition.
Homepages (4 development points)
My STARs
Sent STARs
Send a STAR (3 development points)
Receive a STAR (2 development points)
Comparative Analysis Insight: All 5 of Culture Booster’s top competitors currently have a recognition feature. Implementing STARs would align the product with user expectations.
Kano Analysis Insight: Based on the Kano Analysis, users are most excited about the STARs features. Most responded that they would like if they had access to this feature and dislike if they didn’t.
Journey Map Insight: This feature helps Remi achieve her goal of improving company morale!
Suggestions (11 development points total):
Implement a feature for employees to submit suggestions and vote on them.
Demographic View (5 development points)
Homepage (3 development points)
Send a Suggestion (1 development point)
Suggestion Details (2 development points)
Kano Analysis Insight: Users rated the suggestions feature as attractive, meaning they like the feature but do not necessarily expect it. This means Suggestions would be a pleasant surprise!
Comparative Analysis Insight: 2 of 5 of Culture Booster’s top competitors currently have an employee feedback feature. Implementing this would help Culture Booster stand out in the market.
Journey Map Insight: This feature helps Remi achieve her goal of increasing employee engagement!
“I loooooooove suggestion boxes.”
-Kano Participant 3
Each feature included a flow with multiple interactions. Using Culture Booster’s current design system and features already built, I created high fidelity wireframes, annotated each page with details about the designs, and explained my methodology.
Next steps
After this sprint is complete, I recommend the following next steps:
Conduct think aloud usability tests with people that do not have prior experience with Culture Booster. This will serve to identify what can be improved or added to Culture Booster’s current services.
Perform impression testing with users on the Culture Booster website. This will help identify how prospective clients perceive the product.
Create an information architecture diagram. Using the diagram to pin point flows that could be improved will enhance the users’ experience.
Complete a heuristic analysis on the software. This will identify which UI elements are successful and what can be improved.