Case Study
Product Design
Refining Ninety’s Assessment Tool
Enhancing Usability for a Successful Beta Launch
The Assessment tool is part of the Ninety.io business operating ecosystem. It helps leadership survey teams on company health across nine competencies. The assessment's administrators will get a report and are encouraged to do this quarterly to track trends/improvements.
Company
Ninety.io
Year
2023
Quick Summary of this Case Study
Case studies can be lengthy, so here’s a quick video recap. I’ll walk you through my UX audit and improvements for my first project at Ninety—from understanding the tool and conducting a heuristic evaluation to fixing usability issues, redesigning the survey card for responsiveness, and handing off the final specs and prototype to developers.
Four minute video summary of this case study.
The Opportunity
After the Alpha release of this new tool, usability issues surfaced in this first phase that limited the tool’s effectiveness. The goal was to refine the Assessment Tool for a more intuitive and consistent Beta experience and to integrate and prepare for a general release of the tool.
UX goal: Provide an easy, intuitive, and seamless experience for client leadership and team members to create, take, and view company Assessment results.
My Role
As a Product Designer, I collaborated with a Product Manager, three Engineers, and a Design Lead. My focus was on usability improvements, feature enhancements, and delivering development-ready assets.
The Design Process
Analysis & Evaluation: Conducted a demo, competitive analysis, and heuristic evaluation to identify and prioritize usability issues.
Iterative Design & Feedback: Developed Figma prototypes, integrated stakeholder feedback, and enhanced UI elements.
Beta Refinements: Improved responsiveness, introduced fixed-width cards, a sticky footer, progress indicators, and user-friendly CTAs.
QA & Delivery: Conducted QA testing, documented issues, and collaborated with engineers to ensure seamless implementation.
The Work
Heuristic Evaluation
Heuristic Evaluation: Identified issues and proposed recommendations to solve them.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identified issues per each heuristic and propose recommendations to solve.
Identify and prioritze usability issues
Categorization and prioritization of issues uncovered in Heuristic Evaluation.
Before and After example of UI changes
Alpha release Desktop view (Before)
Beta release Desktop view (After)
Specs of card design for hand off to engineers.
Redesigned Assessment cards with specs to work responsively.
The Solution
Final prototype of the Assessments Tool incorporating UX/UI updates
Prototype of the UX/UI updates for taking an Assessment flow/experience.
Key Outcomes
Enhanced Usability: No horizontal scrolling, improved navigation, and clearer progress tracking.
Actionable Deliverables: Prioritized usability issues to implement, provided annotated Figma screens for responsive designs, worked with engineers to implement and QA screens before Beta release to remove any additional usability issues, and created Jira tickets for bug fixes.
Lessons Learned
This project reinforced my ability to transform user feedback into impactful design solutions, setting the stage for future iterations.The story continues…
In an iterative world, see additional case study for Post-GA user guidance improvements for the continued evolution of this tool and the user experience in the Ninety platform.
Tools Used
Figma, Jira, Google spreadsheets.