PROJECTS
Daily Feed
I designed an intuitive and user-friendly tool for tracking day-to-day work, which quickly became the second most used feature in the entire app.
WORKFLOW
Research - ProductBoard
Competitor analysis
Synthesis
Design
Interviews/Usability testing
Hand off
TEAM
Olivia (PM)
Will (Tech Lead)
Aaron (Frontend Lead)
Me (PD)
TIMELINE
2023
~3 weeks for full MVP
PRODUCT
Zenhub - Daily Feed
Metrics
BUSINESS
Customer Lifetime Value
USERS
User engagement
Customer Satisfaction
Context
Zenhub is a B2B SaaS project management platform designed to streamline the development process for software teams within the GitHub interface. My team, Engagement and Retention, was on a mission to help users track their daily tasks and view their team's daily progress, as well as to run more effective daily scrums.
Research
Despite time constraints, I focused on gathering feedback from ProductBoard to understand the real issues users were facing. Additionally, I studied other products to learn about effective strategies. While my one-on-one sessions with users will be included in the next phase, this initial research was crucial for gaining insight into user needs and product strengths.
Synthesis
During my research, I discovered that managers and stakeholders were having difficulty using the board during daily scrum meetings. The board's overwhelming nature led to issues and distractions, impacting the focus on daily work. This indicated a need to optimize the board's interface to better align with user needs and improve product effectiveness.
As part of the research, I also analyzed various products and found that some had implemented home pages that highlighted teammates' and teams' work, current tasks, and any assigned issues. These interfaces helped users understand their priorities while keeping track of work and team metrics.
After considering the necessary improvements for the board and analyzing similar products in the market, we had to decide which aspect to prioritize. Following consultation with my project manager and stakeholder, we collectively decided to focus on creating a more comprehensive home page that would incorporate day-to-day's work. This choice was based on the potential to bring a fresh perspective to the app and align well with another team's upcoming efforts.
Design
During the design phase, my main focus was on incorporating a user-friendly "home page" that would allow teams to efficiently monitor their daily tasks and progress. Additionally, I aimed to facilitate stakeholders in reviewing each team's work. My objective was to streamline the process for managers to conduct daily scrums and gain a comprehensive understanding of how their team's time was being utilized.
I began by creating a draft and then swiftly proceeded by frequently meeting with my project manager, stakeholders, and developer team to gather their feedback. I also kept them informed about any new implementations I was trying to introduce, in order to quickly find out if they were feasible and to ensure that the project remained on schedule.
Setbacks
We encountered a setback when the team we intended to work with had to change their priorities and couldn't dedicate time to the “Home” page. To deal with this, we added the "Daily Feed" to the sidebar and gave it priority by placing it at the top of the menu. This was done to ensure a better user experience while transitioning to a different page in the future when work on the home page resumes.
Another setback was time, so my project manager and I decided to ship the feature and monitor the usage and feedback in both ProductBoard and MixPanel to identify potential opportunities for improvement.
Results and impact
The first iteration of the Daily Feed quickly became the second most-used feature in the entire Zenhub app, with a 30% increase in usage compared to other features. This success indicated significant customer engagement, suggesting that the feature had substantial potential for adding value to the product and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Next steps
As part of the next steps and next phase of the project, I selected some users based of the data I found in MixPanel for an interview/usability test. I talked to some of our customers and give them tasks to perform the current feature as well as asking for their first impressions.
We quickly identified some of the major pain points, mainly in the team view, and returned to the drawing board to make some improvements.
Below, you can find our current status at the time of this portfolio update, along with a draft containing some of the main points we are brainstorming. Following this, the draft will be shared with my Project Manager and Technical Lead to initiate discussions regarding timing and feasibility.
