User Workspace
The complete sign-up and logged in experience of Capterra.com
Role
Lead Product Designer
Duration
May 2019 - Ongoing
Background
This project came from our 2018 Hackathon. Stakeholders really liked the idea of having a collaborate workspace for users.
Objective
As a business, we wanted to increase customer lifetime value and return rates. Capterra also wanted to make it easier for users to continue their software search and pick up where they left off seamlessly.
Solution
Create a logged in experience that allow users to save software products and keep track of which software products that they’ve previously used.
Scope & Constraints
We were in the midst of a brand refresh and creating a new design system. We were also transitioning from Adobe XD to Figma while building out user workspace.
01 | user research for discovery
Research methods used: competitor analysis, generative moderated user interviews
At Capterra, UX and UI designers partner up on major projects and work very closely from start to finish. The lead UX designer and I performed extensive analysis of our competitors in order to see how they were providing value to their users and what their logged in experience looked like. Through moderated user interviews, we were able to identify various pain points in the software searching process. Most users found the software search process daunting and overwhelming because of the sheer number of software products in the market.
We also learned that individuals looked for software on all types of devices and did different types of research, depending on the device. People tended to do ‘shallow’ research on handheld devices and ‘deep’ research on desktop computers. We also found that users used various applications, such as Google Sheet, Google Doc, Slack, and Microsoft Excel, to compare and keep track of their software search research findings.
Throughout the process, we tried to refer to the double diamond method
02 | ideation, define mvp
All findings and learnings were presented to major stakeholders, product managers, and developers. From there, we held a workshop to ideate based on the things we’ve learned from our research. Then, the product manager talked with stakeholders to define what the MVP of User Workspace would include. Once it was defined, preliminary user stories were created.
03 | user flows & wireframes
Research methods used: unmoderated usability tests
Using Axure, the lead UX designer created a user flow and wireframes. The wireframes incorporated many design elements, such as a left-aligned menu, that were common on dashboards in order to help users quickly adopt. We used the usertesting.com platform to run unmoderated usability tests to test these assumptions and designs.
Here are our key findings:
5 out of 6 users accomplished key tasks, such as selecting, sharing, and removing products from their Saved list
On mobile, the horizontal navigation was not discoverable
On desktop, all users were able to use the left-aligned navigation
04 | Hi-fi mockups + prototype
Research methods used: unmoderated usability tests
After the usability test on wireframes, I made revisions in accordance with the user feedback. I added chevrons and other visual indicators (color, gradients) to show that there are more items in the horizontal navigation.
Also, in the midst of translating wireframes to hi-fi mock-ups, I realized there were a few things that had to be rearranged, especially on mobile. For example, with the actual spacing units and typography, some elements shown on the wireframes didn’t fit on a width of 375px and smaller. Accessibility is super important and we didn’t want to make the font size smaller and/or make the spacing too tight, making it hard to read and identify different sections.
Communication is super important for any project to be successful. So, after thinking of some solutions, I looped back with the UX designer to see what he thought of my changes. Once we came to an agreement, I made changes to the mockups on all screen sizes. We retested the new prototype using unmoderated user testing to make sure all the changes were still user friendly.
Since we were also in the midst of building out components for our new design system, I created very detailed and meticulous specification documents that displayed and labeled all the individual components, such as the button, link, and thumbnail. I continued to communicate with the UX designer, product manager, and developers to make sure we were on the same page and they had everything they needed on the Jira tickets to get started.
05 | development
I attended all stand-ups, backlog grooming, estimation/refinement, sprint planning, and retrospectives. As development started, we soon realized that more aspects of User Workspace needed to be descoped. For example, we had to descope the onboarding flow, tagging feature, grouping feature, and other saving abilities. I kept note of all the design and tech debt and continued to advocate for these descoped features during our bi-weekly sync up meetings with product manager, lead developer, and UX designer.
Results
It was difficult to pare this down to a true MVP because stakeholders wanted this new feature to address various business goals. Because product and leadership couldn’t decide on what should go into the MVP release, there were many delays in the timeline. Also in order to meet tight timelines, many of the user-related functions were descoped, such as onboarding. Although we have 11,000-14,000 unique account creations a month, User Workspace did not significantly improve return rates as leadership had hoped it would.
Lessons Learned
I wish we could’ve worked more closely with the email marketing team to create a nurture track for User Workspace users. If I could go back, I would’ve fought harder to keep the onboarding flow, even if it meant pushing the development back a bit further. I hypothesize that a well-organized onboarding flow helps users get oriented to the new feature, leading to higher rates of adoption.