Workplace Insights Tool
How might we help employers better understand
their workforce?
📙 CONTEXT
What is Naralytics?
Naralytics is a tool to help diagnose and solve workplace issues. The product aims to provide managers with psychological insights into their employees. Naralytics works to tell users not just if an employee is unhappy but why.
🧭 GOAL
Better understand our users and create a product for them
When I joined the project, Naralytics had created an initial demo of the product. Their goal for me was to uncover:
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How can we make this product more intuitive?
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What employee insights do managers care about?
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How can we transform this product into a narrative?
🧑💻 ROLE
Lead Designer:
This was a month-long consulting contract role. I worked as the lead product designer to conduct usability tests, create a revised high fidelity prototype, and provide suggested solutions to the CEO.
🗓 TIMELINE
Aug - Oct 2020
01
User Interviews & Testing
In order to test our target user demographic, the Naralytics CEO recruited five participants who work in management.
I interviewed each of the participants about their struggles with being a manager, the insights they lack into their employees, and wrapped up with a usability test of the demo product.
I analyzed the results and used them to produce a design system and design solutions that reflect the users motives and needs (see below).
02
A New Design System
Brand Goals
The values we aimed to embody with Naralytics' new visual identity were:
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Discovery–The identity should inspire the energy, creativity, and curiosity that results in discovery of psychological insights.
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Technology–Naralytics is a high-tech, AI, analytics platform and its identity should reflect the product's modern and innovative technology.
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Connection–The identity should foster meaningful connections with both employees and the product through warm colors and vibrant illustrations.
Design System
With this new visual identity, I also created a basic design system with established colors, typography, iconography, buttons, and UI elements.
With the visual design completed, it was time to create some solutions to our biggest usability issues.
03
Usability Issues & Solutions
I chose to focus on three of the largest usability issues that arose in the usability tests and create potential solutions for each given problem.
I decided on the largest issues based on the number of users that reported them, how greatly they impacted user and business goals, and how difficult they would be to solve.
Issue – Structure & Layout
“The items don’t have any structure which means I have to read all of them.”
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Amount of options felt overwhelming with little structure.
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The product was laid out more like a survey and less like a personalized, narrative experience.
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Too much text and not enough visuals.
Solution – Navigation, Wizard, and Icons
1. Questions are now split into sections with short, clear titles.
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New navigation bar also allows users to view their progress and click between sections.
2. New wizard format makes the experience feel more like a narrative journey than a survey.
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Breaks the experience into clear chapters with greater interactivity.
3. Icons and illustrations help break up the text and add visual cues
Issue – Input is Too Restrictive
“It would be nice if there was more of a spectrum to choose from.”
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Users desired to be able to input traits on a scale/spectrum, rather than checking off boxes.
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Traits felt skewed towards one personality type. Wanted to create balance with a scale.
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Users saw people as more complex than single traits on a checklist.
Solution – Likert-Scale Input
1. Options are placed on a likert scale from agree to disagree.
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Inputs feel less abstract and more personalized.
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Solution doesn’t require that any of the questions change.
Issue – Abstract Input vs Specific Output
“You’ve got very specific results from such subjective categories. It creates cognitive dissonance in me.”
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Users were confused how they could receive such specific numeric results from such abstract questions.
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Users felt they couldn’t trust the data because it was too specific.
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Results felt like just numbers, rather than a narrative.
Solution – Narrative Results
Output section has been transformed into a multi-slide story about the employee
1. Results are supplemented with digital illustrations and narrative text to give the section a more personalized touch.
2. Results are more abstract, measured in terms of likelihood to match the likert scale input.
The Final Product
Below you can view the final prototype that resulted from day five's usability testing.
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