Integrating performance reviews with anytime feedback for managers

Company overview
Ultimate Software acquired Kanjoya Inc. on September 30, 2016.

For over 25 years, Ultimate software has specialized in people management technology. After the acquisition, the Kanjoya team continued empowering HR professionals with sophisticated engagement and performance tools backed by our NLP and ML algorithms. We built out products and services on Kanjoya’s platform while selling to Ultimate’s customer base.

What I did
Product Designer / Manager

Who I worked with

1 Sr. Data Scientist

2 Data Scientists

3 Sr. UX Designers

1 UX Designer

1 VP Engineer

1 Engineering Director

2 Engineering Managers

15 Engineers

2 Enterprise Sales Reps

2 Sr. Program Managers

Dates
Aug 2016 – Aug 2018 (2 yrs)

Summary

I led and collaborated with a large cross-functional team. I crafted user journeys, task flows, product requirements, information archtiecture, wireframes, and final comps. I also conducted extensive usability testing.

Manager’s journey between performance cycles

Building a performance development review product from scratch was an undertaking. I chose the manager’s journey as a starting point based on my market and user research.

Information architecture

Below is a graphic illustrating how we structured our product.

Sample task flows

These sample task flows below show how the manager interacts with the product.

Manager review task flow

Anytime feedback task flow

Technical requirements

I wrote out stories, epics, and acceptance criteria covering an enterprise grade performance development product. This included, but was not limited to goals, reports, dashboards, feedback workflows, and natural language processing features. Below is a sample of requirements covering the manager’s journey.

Usability testing findings

On anytime feedback we did six rounds of testing with twenty-eight users. Much of the testing revealed friction points in giving and receiving feedback. How do I seamlessly deliver feedback through the system? Who can I give feedback to? Who can see my feedback?

Final comps

Below are some screenshots from the product that integrated anytime feedback with traditional performance reviews. We opted for the desktop experience, because during our interviews we heard that every manager wanted to be at their desktops when writing up performance feedback.

What I learned

The crux of this product is the manager’s experience. They are the ones who interact with the product the most and use it as a tool to help them coach their team, improve productivity, and record any performance issues. Although anyone can give anytime feedback, managers are the ones who need to use that data.

As such, the top priority was nailing the manager’s experience with other features layered on top of that core experience.