PLATFORM DESIGN - CIRCUIT, CustomInk.com

Employees had a negative feeling when using the required feedback and performance tool, “The Mod”. The types of interactions and language used in “The Mod”, felt one sided to employees, and centered around negative feedback. It discouraged engagement which is critical to ensuring order accuracy, securing customer satisfaction, and improving employee bonus pay.

A decrease in users meant that more customer orders had errors, that employees did not learn from their mistakes, and employee weekly bonuses were not maximized.

GOAL: Give employees a safe space to get feedback and encouragement to improve their performance.

• Create a user flow that encourages constructive feedback.

• Allow Managers and Employees to easily access performance data.

• Improve Design and Language to encourage more positive interactions.

• Increase employee use and positive outcomes.

RESEARCH & PROCESS

For this project, all users were internal employees, and as such all research could be held on site with representatives from all levels of the company. From C-Suite, Managers, all the way to the production floor; meetings were held to gather feedback directly from users before and during the design phase.

Any employee that worked on a customer order used the platform, and had the potential to receive negative feedback if they made an error on an order. They also had the opportunity to give negative feedback to a fellow team member if they found an error in their work. The same system also was use to give positive feedback to fellow team members, but this was not as visible to users. This proofing system directly affected the each employee’s bonus pay and therefore felt extremely personal to each.

Team members felt it was only a place for negative feedback and therefore would sometimes avoid using it for minor errors, even though using it would help fellow team members learn from their mistakes. Which intern meant they were not using it as much to give positive feedback. Team members and Managers wanted to be able to see reports on performance, and have a system in place for reviewing errors should their be a dispute.

Managers and C-Suite wanted the new platform to encourage positive peer to peer interactions as use was mandatory to ensure that team members grew in their skills and accuracy on orders.

Above and below are sketches of user flows, information architecture, and visual layout for the new system. Each stage of the design process was vetted with all levels of the company to ensure a consensus on the direction of the tool. It was imperative to get buy-in from all groups to ensure a smooth national roll out and immediate improved engagement.

It was clear that while functionality and visual updates would greatly improve the users ability to share and review feedback - the language was at the core of the negative sentiment for the original platform. I partnered with a copywriter and stakeholders to create a new name for the platform, as well as a new term for “error” so team members would not feel negatively about feedback. We also worked closely to update the language on selection prompts for the feedback submission and the dashboard page ensuring a cohesive environment.

To support the language and terminology updates, I explored ways managers could customize their team’s dashboard with constructive group feedback so as to not single out one employee, and I created ways to highlight the positive feedback that an individual gave and received.

FINAL DESIGN

As this was a mandatory platform for employees to use daily, and something that they had long been feeling negative about, our team and the C-Suite wanted to ensure that roll-out of the new tool was well received and quickly adopted. I again partnered with the copywriter to design a marketing campaign teasing the new platform updates to all offices. This including posters with catchy phrases teasing out the new language updates, and creating a positive sentiment around feedback, badges for team leads, and promotional items for employees during the first week to get them excited and engaged from the start.

The final platform became the “Circuit”. The name was selected because the word gave people a sense of information going back and forth. The term “Flag” was chosen to replace the word “error” giving team members feeling that this thing, this “flag”, was something they needed to be aware of, something that can easily adjust to improve their performance, not something negative about themselves.

The new dashboard design allowed team members to quickly sign in, and get a summary of their performance daily and weekly at a glance. It allowed managers to share important information pertaining to that weeks performance, and it highlighted positive feedback (WOWs) in a feed so team members could see how each other are being supported and recognized for their efforts. An update to the automated email system for WOWs was also redesigned to be on brand and visually cohesive with the new platform.

The feedback submission form is still core to the platform, with new language and menu functionality. Drop down language was improved for better clarity when selecting the type of feedback or “flag”, and some fields were updated with a closed taxonomy to make submitting feedback more efficient.

Navigation was updated to include the Reports page, where managers and individuals could easily search for performance data. The report display was updated to light box views for each item in a search result, allow the user to see all relevant information to an incident, and to request any changes to that feedback based on their experiences.

The new visual design of the platform ensured the platform was on brand, after years of being behind. It made navigating to essential information much faster, and promoted a feeling of positivity by mostly eliminating the use of the brand red color for the more calming brand secondary color of turquoise. The modular design of the dashboard, and flexibility of the reports page meant there was space V2 functionality and beyond that was already in development.