Refreshing a product to encourage self-growth

OVERVIEW

How feedback works in Reflektive

Employees, teams, and managers are empowered to request and provide feedback that they can reference for their 1:1’s and review cycle to drive a culture of continuous assessment and improvement.
There are 2 core experiences in the feedback product:

Employee performance management relies on feedback

Feedback is the connective tissue that unifies Reflektive products by capturing moments of impact throughout the year and channeling the written record of that impact in key contexts.

CHALLENGE

Years of ad hoc additions had left the product struggling with declining user engagement

Feature-focused design and technical debt complicated core feedback experiences, resulting in low usage, high drop-offs, and a declining NPS score.

Analyzing quarterly user research feedback, we identified the key issues:

APPROACH

Begin with user-centric goals to direct our improvements

Setting goals for each core experience provided us with a clear guiding light as we assessed issues, opportunities, jobs to be done, and desired outcomes.

Fixing the entry point discoverability issues and improving the seamless integration

Simplifying the feedback initiation form to a singular, universal call to action and one form pattern would not only make the user experience more intuitive but also significantly lighten the cognitive load. This approach not only enhances user engagement but also minimizes the technical burden by reducing the number of components that need support.

Reducing multiple, inconsistent buttons to a single feedback initiator

I opted for a modal component to host the feedback form, a versatile UI that seamlessly adapts to any interface without disrupting the layout.

Improving workflow selection comprehension and general form cleanup

Substituting obscure workflow descriptions with user-focused selections guarantees users achieve their desired outcomes more effectively.

More explicit calls to action based on user goals ensures easier selection

Simplifying feedback forms and fixing feedback visibility comprehension

Analyzing form input data, we identified the essential fields for streamlining. I employed strategic tip placements, clear visibility cues, and instructional placeholder text to enhance user clarity and ease.

Defining a unified feedback object format

I employed a card pattern, reminiscent of familiar social media posts, for a more user-friendly and adaptable feedback object format.

Each feedback object contains 4 parts: the feedback recipient, the feedback content, additional details for recipient, and actions on the feedback (like, comment). Analyzing form input data, we identified the essential fields for streamlining. I employed strategic tip placements, clear visibility cues, and instructional placeholder text to enhance user clarity and ease.

Unified feedback layout

Filters: the search alternative

Users previously struggled to locate specific feedback for their reviews, relying solely on scrolling their profiles. Initially we wanted to introduce a keyword searching feature, however we didn‘t have the technical resources. To empower users, we introduced key dropdowns for recipient, feedback type, and hashtags, alongside time and provider filters, enabling effortless feedback discovery.

Sticky filters for effortless feedback retrieval

Testing the new patterns with customers

From the pattern wireframes, I created a high fidelity prototype and moderation guide to see how customers interpreted the changes to the feedback tool.

After distilling the insights from these sessions, we further enhanced the product by:
• Switching to more unique icons for feedback type posts
• Introducing timestamps to saved and revisited feedback submissions
• Adding content tips to improve feedback submission (i.e. “helpful feedback is actionable. Make sure the recipients know how to move forward.”

OUTCOME

Final designs

The new feedback system was rolled out to a group of beta customers for further stress testing and to start to collect data around engagement. It was also used as a selling feature for customer subscription renewals.

Two months after this feature was launched, Reflektive was acquired by PeopleFluent. Our feedback system served as a blueprint for multiple complementary products.