My Approach
Project Overview:
As part of the SDWorx Product Team, I am responsible for designing intuitive, user-centric experiences across both iPhone and Android platforms. The app is a comprehensive HR tool that empowers employees and team leads by providing easy access to essential functionalities, such as payslip management, leave requests, and expense submissions, all optimised for mobile use.
Additionally, as the UX Designer for the One Digital Experience team, I focus on improving the customer journey. By collaborating with service designers and gathering insights, I drive informed design decisions. My close work with the customer service team, analysing workflows and tools like Talkdesk and MyServicePoint, allows me to identify improvements from both service and customer perspectives.
Vision and Innovation
Problem Statement:
HR processes can be complex and time-consuming, especially when accessed through non-mobile optimised tools. Employees and team leads needed an app that could simplify key processes, such as checking payslips, requesting leave, and managing expenses, on the go. However, the challenge was to create a seamless, intuitive, and accessible experience that worked well on both iOS and Android platforms.
Hypothesis:
By improving accessibility, streamlining workflows, and ensuring seamless cross-platform experiences, we can increase engagement and satisfaction with the app, leading to improved customer and employee experiences overall.
Identifying Unique Challenges
Constraints and Challenges:
Designing for multiple European languages required careful coordination with translators and copywriters to ensure consistency across the app.
Ensuring that the designs were compliant with accessibility standards across both iOS and Android platforms.
Balancing the needs of different user groups, including employees and team leads, while maintaining a unified experience.
Integrating with existing workflows and platforms like Talkdesk and MyServicePoint without disrupting current customer service processes.
Ensuring that new features, like leave management and expense tracking, were intuitive and easy to navigate.
Multilingual Design: One of the key challenges was designing for multiple European languages. The app needed to support English, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Polish, German, and Spanish. This required careful attention to layout and text length, as different languages often have varying word counts for the same content. This also meant that every text element needed to be flexible enough to adapt without breaking the design or reducing readability.
Coordination with Translators and Copywriters: I coordinated with translators and copywriters to ensure that each language version maintained the same clarity and tone, while also ensuring that no meaning or nuance was lost in translation.
Research & Insights:
I performed deep user research to better understand how employees and team leads interacted with the HR app and validated designs through testing. Additionally, I collaborated closely with service designers to gather insights on improving the customer journey for both service agents and end-users.
Resolving Complex Problems
Key Contributions & Solutions:
Collaborating Across Teams: I worked closely with cross-functional teams, including developers, product managers, and customer service teams, to shape and develop new features like leave management and expense tracking.
Design Sprints: I managed design sprints across three projects simultaneously, ensuring a cohesive design process that allowed for rapid iteration and feedback.
Design System Enhancements: While working within the existing SDWorx design system, I proposed enhancements to improve consistency across platforms and components.
Multilingual Coordination: I produced designs that were adapted for multiple European languages, collaborating with translators and copywriters to ensure that content remained coherent and user-friendly across regions.
Accessibility and Performance: By working closely with developers, I ensured that the app was optimised for both accessibility and performance, leading to a smoother user experience.
UI Components & Cross-Platform Design: I designed consistent UI components that worked seamlessly on both iOS and Android, ensuring a unified experience across platforms.
User-Centric Designs
Wireframing & Prototypes:
I created wireframes (Lo-Fi, Mid-Fi, Hi-Fi) for key features like leave management and expense tracking, refining them through several rounds of user testing. The goal was to design intuitive user flows that allowed employees and team leads to quickly and easily complete their tasks without confusion.
UI Consistency:
My designs focused on ensuring a consistent visual language across both platforms, with common UI components that users could easily understand and interact with. Keeping the Design Library up-to-date is an essential to my day-to-day work. Trying to reuse existing components where possible to reduce work in development.
User Testing:
After initial designs, I led several rounds of user testing to gather feedback and validate the design direction. This testing helped refine key features, improve user flows, and ensure that the app was delivering on its promise of simplicity and ease of use.
Retrospective (so far)
Key Learnings:
Working within the SD Worx team taught me valuable lessons in cross-functional collaboration, particularly when working with developers, translators, and customer service teams. I also learned the importance of balancing technical requirements with user needs, especially when designing for multiple platforms and languages.
Iterative Process:
Managing design sprints for multiple projects taught me how to streamline workflows and enhance communication across teams. Each iteration brought us closer to creating a more efficient, engaging experience for users.
Measure of Success
Success Metrics:
User Engagement: Increased engagement with key features such as payslip management, leave requests, and expense submission.
Positive Feedback: Feedback from employees and team leads indicated a smoother, more intuitive user experience.
Efficiency Gains: The new designs resulted in a reduction in support tickets related to app usability, demonstrating that users were able to navigate the app more independently.
Cross-Platform Consistency: A consistent UI and experience across both iOS and Android platforms contributed to a more unified product offering.
Conclusion
My work at SD Worx is part of an ongoing effort to improve the user experience for a comprehensive HR tool. As we continue to iterate and refine the design, the focus remains on delivering a more intuitive, accessible, and engaging app experience for employees and team leads. Through continuous collaboration with cross-functional teams and ongoing user feedback, we are constantly evolving the product to meet the changing needs of its users, ensuring that it remains a valuable tool in the HR landscape.
