Designing with the users, not only for the users
Collaboration between recruiters and the product team on a new feature
A new strategy for the Discovery phase
Upon the time that I joined Taledo, the company had a new strategy in place: to not only focus on external companies using the SaaS product but also to consider the internal Recruitment Consultants (RCs) as the target user group. This allowed me to work closely with the end users, many of whom were my colleagues, which made space for easy feedback loops throughout the process.
A group of RCs was handpicked to take part in workshops with the product team every Tuesday. These workshops were a fun and interactive way to find and solve problems, and every second Friday, the Product Managers and I led a Business & Product meeting with around 50–60 people to gather feedback through surveys and open conversations. I also reached out to other users to get a broader perspective on the issues.
This followed a similar approach to the Dual Track Agile process, from Kevin Albrecht, adapted by Dottie Schrock on the “A step-by-step guide for conducting better product discovery”, as seen in the image below. We had a solid discovery phase via collaboration, and it felt like every week we were getting closer to the root of the problem.
The needs and pain points of recruiters
As I delved into the world of recruiters and their daily struggles, I uncovered a wealth of information about their personalities, behaviors, and pain points. Through workshops with a group of recruiters, we uncovered the root problems and worked to prioritize which issues to tackle first. I synthesized this information by creating personas, which helped me understand the varying perspectives and needs of different users. Below you can see the persona which has more demanding needs, due to her role and aspiring personality.
One of the main pain points we uncovered was the lack of an overview of the activities that recruiters had with candidates and clients. This often led to communication breakdowns and influenced the trust in the product and service. It was even a problem that I, as a candidate, had experienced firsthand. So, we decided to make “Activity Tracking” our top priority and focus on addressing this issue, which can be expressed as follows:
The main user group does not have a full overview of the activities that each of their colleagues has had with their candidates and clients. This opens up the problem of lack of communication, organization, and transparency, affecting the trust in the product and service.
Ideation and Market Research
During the weekly workshops, we let our ideas flow freely in sticky note brainstorming sessions and diagram discussions. To bring our concepts to life, we challenged the RCs to illustrate their ideas on paper without any influence from my initial sketches. And let me tell you, it was a blast! Not only did they have fun, but they also unlocked a flood of new and innovative ideas.
At this point, it was essential to do a market analysis. We looked at other Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that were tackling similar issues in their software. Following Jakob’s Law, “Users spend most of their time on other sites”, which means that they expect certain usability patterns between several tools they use, to reduce their cognitive load of having to learn something new.
I asked recruiters about the ATS they have been using, and dove into some of them, to understand how they were using it, and the pros and cons of each software. All these hands-on methods were essential to get a more in-depth notion of its usability.
With the research and discussion of the wireframes and user flows, I had juicy content to craft a medium-fidelity prototype, for the users to test, by providing insightful feedback. It was fascinating to see that as we got closer to the final product, they began to understand what was truly important for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Coincidentally, the Tech team had just presented their Agile process and Sprint dynamics during a company event, which definitely added to their understanding of the process.”
Hi-fi prototype for the Delivery phase
Aligned with the development team, I created a Design System at Taledo, based on existing elements and new ones, to aim for a consistent design language across the platform and make it easy for team members to get on board by not having to reinvent the wheel. Using the Design System as a foundation, I crafted the high-fidelity prototype. To make sure everything runs smoothly, I made sure to include the developers in the process. After all, they're the ones who bring our designs to life, so their input was crucial.
Once the MVP prototype was approved by the stakeholders, it was time to hand it off to the developers, with clear design specs. But it’s not as simple as just giving them a pretty design. I met with them, walked them through the journey of how we got to this feature, went over the requirements, and made sure they knew they could always come to me with any questions or issues. A front-end and back-end developer, who also had other tasks in parallel, built the feature during two Sprints.
Feature evaluation
The feature is live!
Is this the end of the project? Definitely not. This is when we get to measure the real impact and plan for possible improvements. We decided to launch the feature internally to Taledo’s RCs first, before rolling it out to external clients. The RCs were blissful when we announced it in the meeting and gave us observations. such as:
“Since a couple of years that I joined Taledo, my colleagues were asking for this feature. Finally its live!”
“I’ve tried it and it’s very intuitive.”
“It’s amazing to see how the IT and Recruitment teams are collaborating.”
They seemed confident about using it, but, as Nielsen Norman Group reminds us on the first rule of usability, “Don’t listen to users”, pay attention to what they do, not what they say. A thoughtful evaluation was indispensable in the following weeks.
On “Throwback Thursdays” (our weekly check-in with the CTO and Product Managers), we analyzed platform usage and data analytics.
The numbers in the first weeks didn’t seem very promising. To understand better these results, we needed a more quantitative approach before adding new elements to the Activity Tracking feature. So, I reached out to some target users who hadn’t been as involved in the development process. One of the main issues was that they haven’t adopted yet this new way of working, although they were seeing the value in going to a candidate profile and looking at the activities tracked by their colleagues.
We knew that releasing a feature that had been discussed and agreed upon with the target user group could have a real impact on improving recruiters’ daily lives. After all, the strategy of working alongside the recruiters brought a great impact during the Design Thinking process.
With management’s intervention, team leaders and members began encouraging each other to track activities with candidates. And it paid off! Usage and satisfaction soared, and the Net Promoter Score increased by 23 points in just one month. The new way of working with the Product Team was a hit, with users praising it made them feel:
Next steps
The next steps would be to continuously evaluate the feature, while closely with users to make improvements and add new elements that will make their lives easier. Just like people change, it is also important to understand that the product needs to adapt constantly to their needs.
Collaboration was key throughout the project. I grasped the opportunity of sitting in the same office as the target user group to conduct ethnographic research and team up with them to design the feature. This empathy led to improved trust and usage of the product and motivated stakeholders to work towards a meaningful outcome.
