SkillSuite Groups Feature

USER EXPERIENCE AND VISUAL INTERFACE DESIGN

Experience and interface design for Groups feature in SkillSuite software.

We designed a new groups feature to improve how to set up users in the organization.

COMPANY OVERVIEW
SkillSuite is a training tool for business employees. SkillSuite helps businesses minimize the headache for training and employees and makes it easy for business leaders to share training materials and track employee progress.

THE TEAM
1 UX Designer, 6 Developers, 1 Product Owner

SkillSuite Groups Feature

How did I have impact?

THE ROLE I PLAYED IN THIS PROJECT
Icon - Product Strategy

Developing product strategy and simple user research with stakeholders

Icon - User Experience

Creating, developing, and presenting new user experience ideas

Icon - Interface Design

Designing interface, creating prototype, and doing usability testing

Icon - Work With Developers

Worked closely with developers to ensure high quality work

What was the problem?

I AM A PROBLEM SOLVER

Stakeholders noticed confusion on how to correctly set up your organization in the software.

The front-end and design team saw a need to make the organizational structure setup more intuitive through creating groups.
1
The terminology of tiers and entities/branches was hard for users to understand.
2
It wasn’t clear how to set permissions and how that could correlate to sub-tiers.
3
It was hard to visualize how tiers correlated with each other.
SkillSuite - Organization

Proposed solutions to the problem

PRODUCT STRATEGY

After having previously tried two other ideas, I concluded a converting organization to a groups feature would help eliminate existing confusion for how to group together users within the organization and setting up permissions.

Icon - Hierarchy
Flow Chart Hierarchy

Our first rendition, but it wasn’t clear to users how to set permissions or do levels.

Icon - Users
User Groups

The concept was simpler and more intuitive for how to group users and set permissions.

Icon_List
List View with Tiers and Entities

Terminology and levels were hard for users to understand and to visualize permissions.

Portfolio - SkillSuite Groups Feature
ANY CHALLENGES TO WORK AROUND?

Not every situation allows for the ideal experience design process for a development team. I experienced the following challenges while working on this project:

Icon - User Research

Lack of User Research

A lack of user research before beginning to design the user experience can lead to some poor choices being made based on thoughts or opinions with proof of what a user actually needs.

Icon - Stakeholder Pushback

Stakeholder Pushback

Oftentimes those who are emotionally invested in the project are so focused on what they think is important that they automatically assume they know what the user wants. When those wants don’t match up, it can result in wasted time and money.

Icon - Timelines

Rushed Timelines

Rushing the design process can result in lower quality design and development because of not allowing the necessary time to think through any potential problems or properly test ideas.

Icon - Roadmap

Lack of Roadmapping

Skipping the original standard process of long-term roadmapping for a product can often result in wasted time and money because of lack of planning for the long term goals of a product.

Experience Design

WIREFRAMED SOLUTIONS
First, I mapped out the experience of how groups and subgroups would be created and where it would be located in the software.
SkillSuite - Wireframe - Groups
Next, I mapped out the experience for setting permissions and adding users to a group.
SkillSuite - Wireframes - Groups, Permissions 1
SkillSuite - Wireframes - Groups, Permissions 2

Proposed solutions to the problem

PRODUCT STRATEGY
SkillSuite - Platform - Organization - Groups

Zach, The CEO, creates groups within the new SkillSuite groups feature and is delighted at how simple the process is.

SkillSuite - Setting Up Groups

Kristi, The HR Manager, sets up groups for each team within the organization and assigns each employee to the appropriate group.

How did it improve?

PROTOTYPE
Business managers can more easily create groups with different permissions and add users with tags.

Having groups instead of tiers and entities is visually more clear on how to group employees and set up different permissions for different users.

BEFORE
SkillSuite - Organization
AFTER
SkillSuite - Organization - Groups1

How did it do?

The groups feature is proving to be a better user experience.

93% of users no longer struggled knowing how to set up their organization and set permissions.

"OMG, this process is sooooo much easier than the older version. It’s so easy to use!"

ZACH, CEO, BELLA LASH

RESULTS
Icon - Intuitive

More intuitive and easier to set permissions and add users

Icon - Success

Organizations being set up correctly without requiring customer support

Icon - NoConfusion

No more confusing terminology or layout

What did I learn?

I learned positive things and where there was room for improvement.

POSITIVE TAKEAWAYS

Icon - Terminology
Terminology is important for helping users understand how to use features.
Icon - Simplified
Users like simple and intuitive processes to accomplish tasks.
ROOM FOR GROWTH
We could have saved 12+ months of development if we had been allowed the following:
Icon - Search
User research
Icon - Person

Listening to user feedback, not just stakeholder feedback

Icon - Roadmapping

Appropriate long term planning and roadmapping

TESTIMONIALS