A 0 -1 Survey Content Management tool
A design that boosted productivity & converted key customers
COMPANY
ROLE
Duration
YEAR
A project to create a survey content management tool that would allow admins to easily create custom survey content in Viva Pulse
Problem
How might we help admins create custom survey content for their organization so they can speed up individual survey creation and boost product adoption
User goals
Have control over customized content for their organization
Quick turnaround on editing content
Business goals
Unblock product purchase for key customers
Efficiency in time to market
Solution
A survey content management portal that allows admins to easily choose the surveys they want to update and modify content with a design familiar to all Pulse users
Impact
40% decrease in redundant survey customization
Unblocked multiple customers who were hesitant to purchase Pulse due to lack of customization
01. Keep your users close
Based on previous feedback, current users were reluctant to adopt Pulse without the ability to control and customize org-wide survey content
Talking to customers
We interviewed our current users/customers to gain insights and understand more about who they are and their needs as HR Admins.
“I wish we could make templates our own to allow managers to select something that's been thought through on our side”
Pulse user, HR Admin
Additionally we found that:
Users currently feel forced to get creative in sending out org-wide custom content
Users are also often survey authors themselves
Some users send out content to multi-lingual teams
Editing content is a role often done by multiple people
02. A little empathy goes a long way
Getting feedback from users and being able to understand their experiences in their current survey creation journey helped us to pinpoint high friction points
Summarized journey map findings
Low points 🤨
No unified approach to content makes things feel disorganized
Time is wasted fixing errors and finding workarounds
Feeling of being locked to stock content
High points 😄
Authors can edit surveys to fit their needs
Current included survey templates are useful
Surveys are created quickly thanks to pre-made content
03. Don't reinvent the wheel
User interviews and journey mapping not only helped to visualize collected insights, but also identify low points that could be elevated.
With this knowledge, I moved through user flows and then to mid-fidelity designs to get feedback from stakeholders.
Approaching the initial design
A competitive analysis conducted previously, highlighted that content in a table format was one of the familiar patterns for managing survey content.
Using this, along with considering Jakob's Law, I was able to choose a design direction that leveraged a layout users in this space already know.
Early content table design (mid-fidelity)
I first collaborated with the project PM to determine what columns should be included in the table.
Leveraging categories that already existed in Pulse's survey template metadata along with a comparison of table columns gleaned from the competitive analysis, I made a mid-fidelity version of the survey management table and went through a lightweight feedback session with some stakeholders.
Updating an existing design
In addition to a landing page, users also needed a space to modify content.
I opted to leverage the existing survey author editing framework rather than starting from scratch, but made a few key updates to align with the primary user (admins).
Update 1 - Revising control panel
Update 2 - Changing buttons and wizard to match user flow
Since creating a template in our feature was kept to a two step process, the wizard was removed. Users could also instantly publish a custom survey once they made changes or save a draft of their work.
04. Considering constraints
Creating a design of an end-to-end flow was helpful to show to engineering.
It allowed them to further understand our design direction and helped us to have a conversation about feature feasibility.
A draft capability was out of scope for this phase of the project
While the majority of the current design could be implemented, after discussing with engineering and gaining a better understanding of how survey templates are actually stored, it was clear that the amount of engineering effort required would delay the project for the following reasons:
Due to the framework Pulse was built on, having multiple users be able to modify the same template at once would cause complex versioning issues
A portal that could handling drafting in a shared environment would require a rework of some of Pulse's backend framework
The fix to this would essentially require a functionality similar to collaborative products like Google docs
05. Give the users what they want
After tabling the drafting capability and making needed changes to reflect it's removal, I updated the design to a usable, high-fidelity prototype.
Now was the fun part, testing with users to get real-world feedback!
Usability test insights
While results were mostly positive on overall usability and navigating through the template editing and publishing process, users did provide a couple interesting insights…
Desirability for drafts
Users wanted to be able to save their work and come back later instead of having to publish their work right away
New content notifications
Multiple users wondered how they could announce the publishing of a new survey template to their organization
06. A balancing act
After getting feedback from users, I wanted to see if there was any way it could be incorporated into the design. While I was aware of the blockers around drafting, I took the user feedback as an opportunity to work with engineering and double check what our options were for both notifications and drafting.
A good compromise
After meeting with project PM and engineering folks regarding an email notifications system, it was clear it would take a couple months of engineering effort and investigation to pull off.
We now had to weigh the business needs and core user need against the benefit of the additional features and a final decision was made to not include drafting or email notifications.
Not being able to include these features in this design phase was a letdown, however after discussing with engineering and PM, we reached a compromise that we could integrate a slimmed down drafting feature and email notifications in the upcoming second phase of the project.
07. As easy as…
Now that I had aligned with engineering and PM on what we could include in this phase, it was time to complete a couple fit and finish reviews, accessibility specs, and handoff the final design to be built!
Below are the final results:
Choose a template to edit
Users can easily find the template they want and sort by the three columns if needed
07. Looking back
Thank you for reading this far (or if you scrolled through most of this case study that's okay too, I know you've probably read 20 of these things today).
This project journey was rewarding, not only just because it shipped, but also for its lessons in adaptability, cross-collaboration, and early-project planning.
Below I've shared a couple of moments that felt worth reflecting on from this project:
Early-project planning
Looking back, I would've leveraged a cross-functional MoSCoW-like workshop to better weigh what we view as must haves and should haves and know where to focus our efforts
Learning how to reach a compromise to keep projects on track
Sometimes (read: often), design requires you to work within constraints and know when to compromise around those constraints
Communicating with stakeholders & partners
Project partners also have needs, goals, and motivations that should be considered, just like users. Speaking with them early and often can create better alignment and help speed up design
Partnering with other designers
When feature areas overlap, it's essential to include designers in charge of that space. This will help boost collaboration, make it easy to coordinate any changes that need to be made, and keep the design consistent across the product
