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User experience designer
1
Problem statement
The company has different people with different skill sets. There is no method to gather all the skills together or there is no method to search for a particular skill as and when needed for a project. The company needs a way to view all people by their skills and search for them when needed.
Who would use this application ?
Employee
All people who work in the organization. Each person should be able to add their skills in the system, see the skills of other people, and update them time to time.
Managers
People who manage teams and can be a person who wants to search for a particular skill needed for his/her projects.
Super user
People who are at the organization's leadership level and need to create reports for a balanced pool of skills within the organization.
Responsibilities
My responsibility was to design an application that would cater to the problem, get the visual design implemented, and then coordinate with the development team and visual design team to implement the design.
2
Analysis
Two of the major parts of the application as understood from the problem statement:
1. Viewing different skills available within the organization.
2. Searching for a particular skill within the organization
a
A comparative study I conducted based on different products available in the market.
In the company we were already using confluence, thus adding a plugin called skill finder for confluence was also an option thought of. However, due to the various customization need and prices, we thought to continue developing the application.
b
Some screenshots referred:
c
Created task analysis based on brain writing activity
d
Study of different types of profiles
Studied various resumes, job portals to find out different skills people have for software development companies. I also did a study of various applications, as to how people enter their details, what skill details do they enter, etc.
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It was also interesting to find in the domain of management, how the level of expertise is being depicted.
I also thought of how to motivate an employee to keep his/her skills page updated. Thus, I thought of having recommendations and compliments by peers and seniors, so that the employees can be proud of showcasing their skills within the organization.
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While searching the web regarding skill matrices in the domain of management, I found a graphical way of representing competency for skill - the four-block diagram. On a level of 1 to 4 an employee can represent whether the skill he/she possesses is of Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, or Mentor level. This helps in reading about a skill competency level. I have used the same concept in my design.
e
Motivation and other experiences
I had thought about how to keep employees motivated to keep their profiles updated. Thus I wanted to experiment to include few gamification ideas into it.
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I had thought to include:
1. Intrinsic motivation through showcasing of appreciations and recommendations from senior management, to feel proud of their profile.
2. Collection of virtual badges, which can be showcased to peers. They can be of bronze, silver, and gold, based on the completeness and recency of their individual profiles.
3. The badges to be converted to gift vouchers at the end of a certain time period.
f
Card sorting
After a fair idea of what are the basic tasks people normally perform while doing skills management, I decided to conduct a card sorting activity with few stakeholders, project managers, employees, and people from the leadership team.
Card sorting was a new concept within a lot of people in my organization. Thus I had to write a mail to explain to them why and what is card sorting, how it is done, and how it can be beneficial for the project that I am doing. Also, I wanted to explain how long the activity can take and how to perform it. I thought to conduct it online, thus enabling me to reach outside India and take some inputs from various geographical locations. We had offices majorly in India and U.S. I conducted the card sorting activity with an “Optimal workshop” and was lucky to have 10 participants who actively participated in it. They completed the activity with the specified time slot and I got very valuable inputs.
g
Basic information architecture based on the card sorting result
3
Wireframes evolutions
Profile page - Initial version.
The page, an employee would fill up to showcase his/her skills, recommendations.
Search page - Initial version.
Any employee can be searched from the organization based on pre determined search criteria.
The user can also shortlist candidates if needed.
Profile page from search result - Initial version.
The user can check detail for an employee from the search result. The user can also see the shortlisted candidates if needed.
Shortlisted page- Initial version.
Profile page from search result - Final version.
The profile page from the search result and the main profile page look similar. Only in my profile, the user can view/edit his/her personal profile.
The user can further manage the shortlisted candidates, categorize them, sort them etc.
Organization skills page - Final version.
The page would help senior management to browse skills inventory within the organization and generate report from it if any.
Shortlisted page- Final version.
The user can shortlist candidates and group them as per their needs and keep them saved for later references.
Recommendation page- Final version.
This page would help users to manage received recommendations and also to request a recommendation from his/her team mates.
Search page - Final version
The user can search with different criteria. The search has its individual page. It also assists the user to save time to re-search by providing "Saved searches".
Search result page - Final version
The user can sort the search results based on criteria, shortlist them, and export as well as save the search.
Settings page- Final version.
This page would help the application to have a repository of different skills needed within the organization. This page would only be visible to a user who has permission. He/She can also approve or delete skills from the application.
Profile page from search result
Shortlisted page
Organization skills page
Search result page
Settings page
Visual design for the screens
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Conclusion
The project was a proof of concept. However, after successful development, the application was well taken by the management. It was decided this idea be converted to a full-fledged application with other performance improvements etc.
Few takeaways for me from this project
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In a rare opportunity, I was involved with the project from the initial kick-off meeting until the development. Thus I had the opportunity to take a lot of design decisions to mitigate technical feasibilities myself and get them implemented with the help of a developer team.
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I could involve a lot of people while doing this project, taking their inputs while doing card sorting, and then during review calls.
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I also had the opportunity to review the language and tone of the textual communication with the documentation team.
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I could implement few gamification ideas, like badges, leaderboards, etc. to motivate employees to keep their profile updated and get more visibility by gathering better recommendations.
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Worked closely with the senior management of the company.