RESEARCH
CONCEPT DESIGN
ARCHITECTURE
PROTOTYPING
TESTING
Creating meaningful bonds within business teams
MY ROLE
UX researcher and designer
APPLIED SKILLS
ACHIEVEMENTS
LEARNINGS
UX Research, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Heuristic Evaluation, Personas, Information Architecture, Sitemaps, User Flows, Sketching, Wireflows, Visual Design, Branding, UX Writing, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Utilized an end-to-end design approach including secondary research and user interviews; human-centered, iterative design and prototyping; and usability testing to maximize the viability, feasibility, and desirability of the product.
Leader and employee well-being is a complex and salient problem space, and the Legato MVP only scratches the surface of creating a viable solution. Continued research and testing to develop a more innovative, engaging, and impactful experience is necessary to create a product that will create meaningful change in people's lives.
THE PROBLEM
How might we help improve employee well-being and nurture a more sustainable workforce?
THE SOLUTION
Legato is an employee communication platform designed to create organic, meaningful, and functional bonds between teams in ways traditional methods cannot. Combining a people-centric intranet with communication, feedback and collaboration tools presented in a familiar social experience, the app helps companies foster the engagement and performance they need while nurturing the culture of care and connectivity employees want.
MY GOAL
Design an intuitive, enterprise-focused product to help improve quality of well-being amongst business leaders and their teams.
PROJECT PLAN
Research, design, and validate the product using the methods listed below:
TOOLS
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Understanding the depth of the work well-being problem
I began this project by conducting secondary research on well-being in the workplace. Along with confirming my suspicion that employee well-being suffered in 2020, the findings provided additional insight that would give me initial direction in this project:
WELL-BEING IS HOLISTIC
It's not just the way we eat, exercise, and sleep that contribute to our overall well-being. Everything that makes up our experience has an impact including our financial, social, and career experiences.*
A PRE-PANDEMIC DOWNWARD TREND
Employee well-being began declining long before the emergence of COVID-19. Since 2009 workplace stress and burnout have increased, reaching new highs in 2020 partially in response to the global pandemic.**
THE BUSINESS COST OF POOR WELL-BEING
Employees are taking more sick days, job performance and engagement is suffering, and burnout is leading to heavy turnover. In 2020 alone, $322 billion was lost in turnover and lost productivity costs due to employee burnout.**
HOW LEADERS PLAY A ROLE
Leaders play a critical role in positively influencing well-being. They are ultimately responsible for creating a culture where well-being is part of the natural and expected way things are done. They must act as role models by becoming champions for well-being within their organizations.**
*The Essential Elements of Well-Being. Rath T., Harter, J. (2010)
**State of the Global Workplace: 2021 Report. Gallup, Inc. (2021)
USER INTERVIEWS
How are today's leaders managing well-being?
Because of the crucial role leaders play in creating cultures that support well-being, I spoke with leaders across industries to get a better understanding of their personal experiences managing well-being in and out of the office. Some of the questions I had:
How are leaders managing their day-to-day personal well-being? What factors influence a leader to feel exceptionally energized or stressed at home and at work?
What approaches are leaders currently taking in response to stress and burnout amongst their business teams? What challenges are they currently facing?
KEY FINDINGS
I gathered the data and created an affinity map to uncover trends and themes regarding leaders and well-being. What I found:
LEADERS ARE PHYSICALLY AND FINANCIALLY WELL
When it comes to physical and financial well-being, leaders are doing well. They make a point to eat healthy and work out regularly, and they don’t stress about money... because they have it.
THE COMMUNICATION CORRELATION
3/5 leaders discussed taking measures to foster open communication in the workplace. These individuals scored HIGH on self-reported quality of well-being. Conversely, leaders who reported poor team communication scored LOW on self-reported quality of well-being.
A shot of the affinity map
STAKEHOLDER
BUY-IN
Next I delivered a story-driven research presentation to get stakeholder approval to before continuing on to the design stages of the project. This concluded with five "How Might We" statements from which to choose moving forward.
IDEATING THE SOLUTION
How might we help leaders improve well-being amongst their teams?
DEFINING THE END-USER
I set out to design a product that would attract business leaders who already understand the implications of well-being in the workplace. To help put myself in their shoes, I created a persona and empathy map for my target user: Alex, the executive.
IN SUMMARY
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A leader at home and in the office, Alex wants to make sure all their people are happy, healthy, and productive.
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Though they make an effort, it's never been easy for Alex to sustain high quality well-being along with their day-to-day responsibilities.
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Alex wants to create a culture at work that supports individual well-being because they truly that they and their people have ample energy to do everything they want to do each day. They also want to attract and retain top talent within their organization.
ARCHITECTING THE EXPERIENCE
The communication/well-being link
At this point I had a thousand ideas, and many user stories, for ways I could help leaders and teams improve well-being. So, I made a data-driven decision to focus my product on the positive correlation between communication and well-being.
MAPPING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS
To help leaders practice open communication, regularly ask for feedback, and check in with their team members as people first, I built a sitemap with four core elements:
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A discussion tool for teams to reflect and talk in an open and secure environment
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An internal survey capability stocked with customizable and research-backed workplace and wellness assessments
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An enterprise social network where anyone, at any level, can consume and share information
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A teams function for workgroups to connect beyond their roles as employees
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CREATING USER FLOWS FOR COMMUNICATION TOOLS
Next I identified and built four user flows necessary for success in my MVP: sign-up, account creation, start a new team discussion, and respond to a discussion prompt.
VISUALIZING THE PRODUCT
Learning from the marketplace
With the architecture of my product in mind, I looked at some existing employee engagement and communication platforms for inspiration and direction moving forward. I checked each for desirable features and functionality, then utilized heuristics from the Nielson Norman Group's 10 Usabiliity Heuristics for User Interface Design.
GETTING IDEAS ON PAPER
To visualize basic design elements, screen layouts, and content before creating digital wireframes, I created sketches of the screens in my red routes.
Early sketches of some of the core features
GOING DIGITAL
With an idea of what each screen might look like, I built digital wireframes for my red routes. I added a few screens and streamlined the processes by combining the sign-up and account creation user flows into one wireflow.
VISUAL DESIGN & BRAND IDENTITY
An inspiring purpose that goes beyond team communication
Heading into the UI phase of the project, I wanted to remember that the original intent for this product was to improve employee well-being and make a real difference in people's lives. So I created a moodboard, style guide, and brand name aimed at represting that:
CREATING THE PROTOTYPE
Designing a clean and accessible hi-fi prototype
ENSURING ACCESSIBILITY ON MOCKUPS
Using Figma I completed the design on some of my key screens, ran an accessibility audit, and made necessary adjustments before building out the complete high fidelity prototype.
BUILDING LEGATO IN HI-FI
After making a few adjustments in response to the findings of the accessibility audit, I moved on to creating the hi-fi designs of all red route screens in my prototype.
A few high fidelity screens in the Legato prototype
USABILITY TESTING & ITERATION
Uncovering opportunities to improve usability and desirability
FIRST ROUND TESTING & ITERATIONS
To uncover usability issues and identify opportunities for improvement I tested the Legato prototype with five end-users, then iterated on my designs based on the findings. Some iterations:
SECOND ROUND TESTING AND FINDINGS
The iterations were successful: end-users stated they could envision utilizing the Legato app with their teams. They described the app as casual, relaxed, cool, laid-back, and fun... for a business app.
INTERACT
Experience the interactive prototype
Follow the link below and open the sidebar to experience all three flows in the Legato prototype.
CONCLUSION
A first step toward success
Since this is Legato's MVP and my first ever end-to-end UX project, it's important to highlight what's next for future versions of the app and what I learned in this process.
WHAT'S NEXT FOR LEGATO
At minimum, considerations should be made for implementation of new features and design elements including:
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In-app video chat and meetings with calendar integration
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Business app integrations including Zoom, Slack, Salesforce, etc.
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More playful, exciting visual design and feature choices
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Broader scalability for large organizations
MY TAKEAWAYS
Diving into my first complete UX project, I was excited to take on nearly every step in the process. I enjoyed utilizing my research background to explore a complex and salient problem space, and felt at home putting together the architecture for the site. My meticulous side came in handy as I worked on high fidelity designs, and my experience conducting interviews proved to be useful training for running usability tests. I naturally value quality work over ego, so I enjoyed conversations with my UX mentor who guided me through this process, and found it easy to adjust my perspective and designs as I learned more about UX and building impactful products.
The biggest challenge I faced was moving from concept to design in the sketching phase; I learned the value of holding nothing sacred, iterating on initial ideas, and setting aside perfectionistic tendencies. Overall, this project was incredibly useful; I learned a broad range of UX tools that I will continue to utilize and improve upon for work in future projects.
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​Can Legato improve quality of well-being amongst business teams? Only future testing could tell us. I believe much more can to be done to ensure the success of the Legato product, and much more should be done to make strides toward solving the issue of declining employee well-being.