THE MYERS-BRIGGS COMPANY (2016-2017)
Responsive web app redesign
CHALLENGE
The Myers-Briggs Company's assessment platform, Elevate, provided a "limited" experience for individuals who were taking assessments. This limited experience was a deterrent for large, corporate customers who wanted to provide their employees with a more robust assessment experience. Ultimately, resulting in lost sales for the company.
Our team was tasked with thinking through how we could build a more robust respondent experience that would cater to our corporate customers, without influencing the assessment process.
MY ROLE
As the Senior UX Designer on the project, I worked on the extended respondent experience, collaborating closely with the UI designer, product managers, and developers.
I wireframed potential solutions for the extended experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile; presented solutions to key stakeholders; and provided detailed functional specifications for the development team.
1. DISCOVER
When I joined the project, the UI designer and product managers had already done some initial brainstorming, defining who our users were and what they were struggling with. During the Discover phase, I spent most of my time talking with the team to better understand what they had learned from their initial brainstorming sessions.
I learned that users coming to complete assessments varied widely from high school students to senior executives, all with the same goal of completing their assessments.
In looking at the assessment flow, the team found that there were fundamental usability issues with the assessment process. There wasn’t much guidance on the site and many users would leave thinking they had completed their assessment when they hadn’t. This was an issue that our customer service representatives would consistently help troubleshoot, causing frustration for the practitioner who sent the assessment and the respondents who were taking the assessment.
Responsive web app (before)
There also wasn’t much of an experience on the site. There weren’t additional tools or resources for users to interact with after completing their assessments. This often lead to users googling the assessments on their own, leading to misinformation about our assessments, what they measured, and what their results meant.
Moreover, this was an issue for larger, corporate customers who wanted their employees to have tools and resources to explore at their own pace. Ultimately, impacting The Myers-Briggs Company's sales.
2. DEFINE
Once I had a better understanding of what problems the users and company were facing, I defined clear goals to help guide my design work. Based on the information I received during the Discover phase, I defined the following goals:
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Address fundamental usability issues across the site
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Provide unbiased, factual information regarding our assessments
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Create more value for users to return to the site, subsequently allowing us to retain and acquire new corporate business
3. DESIGN
The UI designer and I worked closely throughout this process—she worked on addressing the fundamental usability issues with the assessment process, while I worked on how we could create more value for users after they completed their assessment.
I began by thinking through the users’ journey and how they felt throughout the assessment process to see how we could add value. I even recalled my own journey in completing these assessments and how I felt throughout the process. To get a clearer picture of the users' journey I leveraged the knowledge within The Myers-Briggs Company, speaking with subject matter experts. Through these conversations, I found that users' feelings varied greatly throughout the process.
How someone feels can vary greatly, from skepticism to anxiousness. My goal was to make users feel confident in the assessment process.
To help users feel more confident in the process, I wanted to provide them with additional information after completing their assessment. This included:
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Providing users with information about our assessments
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Showcasing customer experiences
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Highlighting The Myers-Briggs Company's credibility
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Providing additional resources for exploration
I started sketching some potential solutions to see how we could present this information. I frequently met with my team to gain input and feedback throughout the process, so that I could iterate quickly. I then transitioned to building interactive wireframes using Axure RP.
Wireframe providing trusted information and instilling trust in the assessment process
I also presented my solutions to internal stakeholders—customer service representatives, subject matter experts, and developers—to gain input and feedback outside of our core team. This helped validate my thinking and refine the solution further.
Wireframe for new interactive tool to compare your type to others
Once the team felt that we had a solid solution in place, I scaled the solution for tablet and mobile.
Scaled wireframe for mobile
Scaled wireframe for tablet
As the wireframes were completed, I handed them off to the UI designer for the visual design. We worked closely to ensure that all cases and scenarios I identified were covered.
Final design for extended experience
Once the visual designs were completed, we were ready to handoff to the development team.
4. DELIVER
The UI designer and I worked closely to provide the development team with all necessary documentation. The UI designer provided final design mockups using Zeplin, and I provided written specifications, which documented all cases and functional changes to the platform. Given that we involved the development team early on in the process, handoff was smooth.
I worked closely with the development team throughout the development process to ensure that everything was built according to the specifications that were provided.
RESULTS
The redesigned assessment experience launched in March 2018.
Within the first week of launching the site we saw a 3% increase in returning users, and 4 users gifted the MBTI experience. This is only the beginning, as creating long-term engagement requires more than providing static content. We’re looking forward to enhancing this experience further to provide even more value to users.
Moreover, the redesigned experience has allowed us to retain and sign new corporate customers. Our sales team in particular was very grateful for the work our team had done. We’re looking forward to seeing the impact this continues to have on sales.
The customers who have looked at the changes your team made to the respondent site have been really excited to see the new content. People think that it is a GREAT value add.
- Corporate Solutions Sales Representative
EMT (Executive Management Team) was very impressed with the respondent redesign demo Excellent job!
- Director, Platform Product Management
The new experience is very sellable. She [the customer] ended the call asking for a proposal from our sales team.
- Director, Platform Product Management