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mfaithlee@gmail.com
Michelle Lee © 2022
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The IBM Career Interviews is a required annual interview that takes place between employees and managers. There are two interviews: professional and workload. My goal was to evaluate usability and user satisfaction of the Career Interviews feature to identify issues, gather feedback, and enhance the user experience.
Background:
My role as the lead designer on this project was was to formulate the research plan, propose design recommendations following our testing, and compile the user feedback to present to the larger team at the design playback.
The employee and manager career interviews lived in two different locations:
For employees (left), the career interviews can be found on the reflect page. Users would have to scroll to the bottom of the page to find their outstanding interviews.
For managers (right), their team interviews can be found on the team page.
Me and two other designers conducted usability testing on the tool. We spoke with 11 participants (5 employees + 6 managers) in 30 minute sessions. Participants were asked to walkthrough various scenarios as they interacted with the live environment. I designed the scenarios so that users could point out pain points as they completed the tasks. Participants were encouraged to talk aloud throughout the study.
- Please review your workload interview and mark it as complete.
- You want to review your 2022 interview. Where might you find this?
- You just finished your professional interview. Go in and review it to mark it as complete.
- Your direct report is due to take leave. Mark one employee as excused from any outstanding interview.
- In an ideal situation where would you want to see the feature live?
To summarize the top 4 findings:
Finding #1
Users expressed the tool should live by itself, and not under the reflect page. The employee interviews either gets lost or has little prominence making it seem not important.
User comments
"The placement of the interviews at the bottom it seems like they are not important and only ‘nice to have’ or a recommendation."
"There are too many things at the top of the page and I have to scroll down to get to the actual FCC."
Finding #2
Major issues when users try to save information. Users lose data because they don’t realize they need to click “Save Text” before moving on to the next step. Users have trust issues on the system, they write the answers in a word document and then save them in the system because they're not sure it will effectively save changes.
Finding #3
Confusing status indicators about what step the interview is currently on. Call to action asks user to complete interview even though the interview has already been completed.
User comments
"I do not know why it is asking me to complete an interview when really it is out of my hands at the moment. I just have to wait for my manager, but there is nothing for me to do."
Finding #4
Since users have to complete interviews at different times, they want to be able to sort by type of interview.
User comments
"Sometimes we have to do it in different times, so I want just to see the ones I have to do immediately sorted first."
Solution #1
Moved the location of the career interview to its own section page in the navigation. As a manager, you can now view your individual and team interviews in one location.
Solution #2
Removed the save and discard buttons on the interviews. Rather, I incorporated an auto-save pattern for the long text fields with a status tag right next to the interview title.
Solution #3
Clear status indicators about what step the interview is currently on, and tags within the interview to clarify status. I introduced a kanban-styled board so users can better visualize the workflow and interview process.
Solution #4
Users now have an option to filter the interviews by type (workload, professional), which helps reduce information overload.
I wanted to gather additional feedback to ensure our prototype was addressing the initial pain points. I met with 3 additional users to gather quick insights.
The designs were well received by the users.
User comments
“Looks good and it’s clear. Annually, I can immediately see what I need to do and how I can plan out the year for my employees.”
“I really like this view. Looks familiar to me as a manager.”
“It’s very visual.”
There were small suggestions by the users that led me to my final designs.
- Making the 'Current Year - 2023' dropdown more prominent on the page. It is the main action on the page, so users wanted to see a higher contrast between the dropdown and the background.
- Renamed 'In Progress' to 'Under review' based on the users expressing confusion about the wording.
- Users wanted a better explanation on the tool to understand why and what is expected of them. Added several informational tooltips around the tool to provide more context for the user.
