Automated in-house push notification system

Performance Management admin tool. 2023

Overview
The employees in our organization use a performance management tool to obtain quarterly feedback from their managers. The tool is primarily utilized by two user types:
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1. Reviewee: Employees who document their contributions and skills across projects for evaluation by their manager (the reviewer).
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2. Reviewer: Managers who assess the reviewees' performance and provide feedback on their progression.

The importance of this tool lies in its ability to create 'snapshots' – official records of an employee's work impact, crucial for career growth assessments. It also captures the role of managers in supporting their assignees' development.

To ensure consistent usage and timely feedback, the business emphasizes the importance of regular snapshot submissions. This highlights the significance of an effective notification system in facilitating communication with the tool's users.
Role
Senior UX/UI Designer
Team
Arvind Punj, Dev
Subu Molleti, Dev
Kelly R, Admin
Ali M, Admin
Jack Kelly, BA
Akansha Sharma, QA
Responsibilities
Research
User interviews
Problem solving
High fidelity mockups
Timeline
UX - 4 weeks
Development - 8 weeks
QA - 4 weeks
View prototype
Our administrators, the primary users of the external tool Eloqua, are central to our efforts in developing an effective notification system. By honing in on their experiences, we aim to improve and overcome any obstacles, ensuring a more efficient notification system for our snapshot tool.

Problems

The current push notification system in our performance management tool, which relies on a third-party tool like Eloqua, faces challenges in time efficiency and cost.

Main issues with the external notification tool are,

  1. A lot of time is spent upfront in the initial setup of the notifications
  2. Substantial costs are incurred for subscriptions, integrations, and training‍
  3. Underutilization of features, leading to diminished return on investment‍‍

Vision

To build an in-house automated push notification system into the Performance Management tool that efficiently creates, updates, and monitors notifications.

Results

Enhanced Efficiency
The integration of our push notification feature into the Performance Management tool has significantly enhanced operational efficiency, serving 65,000 users.
Configurable Criteria
It facilitates timely reminders, utilizes user data and activity from the tool, for pre-defined configurable criteria with minimal manual oversight.
Cost Savings
Shift from external tools to in-house system saves approximately $200,000 USD yearly, eliminating the need for external subscriptions.
Save on training costs
The expense of in-house training to learn and use third-party tools has been eliminated.
Development Savings
Integration of external push notification systems would have required additional development effort, time, and money, which are now saved.
Built-in Analytics
In-house analytics enable precise monitoring of notification impact and trends, aligning closely with strategic business objectives.
Rapid Customization
Allows for swift notification customization and time change.

How did we achieve it? Unveiling the journey.

Research

I interviewed a panel of six administrators to understand the challenges associated with external notification tools. Our discussions revealed that a lot of work has to be done upfront to set up the communications in Eloqua and building of workflows in Alteryx for segmenting and analyzing the target population. This confirmed our suspicions and gave us ammunition to convince product management to move forward.

After analyzing other competitors, I found that their features, services and cost were similar. I decided to approach competitive research differently, looking more closely at unique features that align with our business needs for establishing effective communication with the tool’s users.
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Opportunity

By creating a custom notification system within the Performance Management tool will allow us to leverage direct access to all internal data sources, eliminating integration costs. This approach will significantly reduce setup time and effort and improve user segmentation to send reliable and consistent notifications to the target audience at optimum times. All while enabling in-house data monitoring to drive 99% engagement metrics.

Product strategy guide

The insights from the interviews enabled me to develop a Value Proposition Canvas, assessing Eloqua's features and services that are valuable to Admins.

By cataloging the jobs, pains, and gains of Admins, I deepened my empathy and pinpointed their challenges. Prioritizing products, services, pain relievers, and gain creators helped me discern which functionalities are effective and which are missing.

These findings will guide us in replicating essential features in our new product and in developing solutions to alleviate Admin pain points. Incorporating these features into a pre-defined setup will ensure both efficiency and consistency.

Objectives

Below we start building our push notification system, let's reiterate the objectives:

  1. Accelerate initial setup and automate scheduling
  2. Enable necessary customization of notifications
  3. Facilitate collaboration and ensure alignment with business goals
  4. Achieve cost efficiency by eliminating the need for external resources or integrations
  5. Focus on essential features that are easy to use with a simple interface and supported by effective monitoring.

However, the project is constrained by a limited budget and a tight deadline.

Focussing on the MVP

After carefully examining the features that will deliver value to our users, I began categorizing them through a card sorting exercise, while simultaneously visualizing the architecture of the notification system. In discussions with the Business team, we emphasized our commitment to prioritizing the development of essential items, motivated by user and business goals.

During our discussions, we decided to separate Analytics from the Notification system due to tight timelines and the availability of alternatives. We intend to utilize our existing data analytics resources to generate visual reports that evaluate the notification engagement metrics, thereby assessing its performance.

Mapping the user's journey to achieve a goal

My goal was to design task flows that are simple, intuitive and require minimal clicks. While refining the steps for configuring notifications, I identified a need to exclude specific individuals. Engineers highlighted that segmentation filters might not adequately address this issue. To resolve this, I integrated a customized 'Exclude' section to allow for the exclusion of certain employee IDs.

Exploration

Choosing among three design layouts for notification setup took into account user preferences, common use cases, and the challenges of development. The final design - Design 3, a two-step setup, starts with selecting a recipient category, followed by a page with dynamic filters tailored to that selection. This approach stands out for its simplicity, ease of revision, and speed, primarily due to its fewer steps.

In contrast, the first design, which involved multiple pages with a dynamic progress bar for the non-linear context, was deemed too complex to build by the engineering team. The second option, featuring two tabs for different recipient categories, was efficient but discarded to prevent admins from simultaneously creating category-specific notifications.
I explored a variety of different ways for designing predefined criteria, trying out dropdowns featuring autocomplete/typeahead input, radio buttons paired with input fields, tabs and more. However, upon testing, we discovered that radio buttons with input fields offer the best flexibility.
For user segmentation, we opted for multi-select dropdowns. To simplify the process of selecting from hundreds of options each time, I implemented cascading dropdowns. These dynamically update the list of options in a subsequent dropdown based on the previous selection, ensuring only relevant choices are presented. This approach proved efficient.
I tested two versions of the Notification dashboard, and the second iteration exhibited better usability. It is easier to quickly assess and compare the different states of notifications ('Pending', 'Sent', 'Disabled', 'Failed') on a single page. A unified layout simplifies the interface and is beneficial for monitoring, management, faster information retrieval, and quickly identifying redundant items. It also helps users identify patterns or issues that may not be as apparent when viewing statuses in separate tabs (Active, Completed, and Stopped).
View prototype

Next steps

Design template creation: We will enhance the speed and efficiency of creating content by introducing customizable design templates. These templates will ensure brand consistency and allow for high personalization.

Dynamic content for diverse audiences: We aim to build a dynamic content creation feature that will adapt notifications in real-time. This approach will target various audiences with tailored, engaging content.

Streamlining Notification Management for Scalability: We aim to simplify the management of notifications. As the volume of notifications increases, ensuring their efficient organization and quick access within the dashboard will become increasingly important.

AI-powered notification automation: In future, we will implement an AI model to automate the creation of notifications. Utilizing machine learning to analyze user data, this system will automatically craft personalized notifications, minimizing manual input while maximizing relevance and engagement.

Summary

Listening to our users and designing a solution that provided real value to them helped me grow as a designer, and I walked away with a few key takeaways:

One Step at a Time. Early in the discovery phase, building an automated in-house notification system seemed daunting. However, breaking down the problem and scaling back to MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) enabled us to develop our first version of a dynamic push notification system tailored specifically to our tool.
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Engaging directly with users proved invaluable. It not only allowed me to dive deep into various use cases but was also crucial in getting the rest of the organization on board.

A strategic approach. Frequently revisiting our objectives to focus on meeting fundamental user needs kept us on track and on time.‍‍