workiva user experience case study
Joining the UX Team
A six-week comprehensive onboarding process focused on ensuring the success of every addition to the Workiva UX organization.
Overview
The UX team at Workiva has always maintained a fantastic comradery and culture. We are allowed to build amazing things that change people’s lives, enabling them to consume and organize large sets of complex financial data with confidence.
However, as Workiva continued to evolve from a single-offering to an enterprise platform, it became apparent that scaling our team must too grow. We had to embrace this change and understand:
Workiva’s R&D organization consisted of 20+ product teams. However, a user should not notice that. Everything needed to work consistently, and individual “signatures” had to disappear between offerings. A UXer, regardless of discipline, had to understand how our product principles informed our UX strategy, which was guided by our design ecosystem. Consumer-grade UX for the enterprise was our battle cry.
02.
Like designing a product, the danger of being too close to see the seams is a reality. The operational glue that held the team together was often assumed and passed down organically. We needed to unify and benefit from, consistency in our operations. A new team member should understand the inner workings of processes like promotions, peer reviews, shareouts, and how other departmental areas functioned.
03.
Maintaining our culture was of the utmost importance. While we enjoyed almost non-existent voluntary churn, it was grounded on a symbiotic relationship. Like any relationship, it has to be intentional. By understanding the team’s needs and the individuals involved, I could create an inclusive space where everyone is empowered to succeed.
problem statement
Scaling THE UX Organization
When I joined in 2012, the team was less than ten. By the time I received my promotion to department head in 2018, we had grown to over 20; And eventually to 35. In addition to the direct hires I brought into the team, I recognized a few crucial lessons critical for every new addition:
- There was little value in a new hire joining their product team in the first few weeks. As a new employee, context from their product team had not yet been established, and there was little sense of how they contributed to the bigger ecosystem picture. The danger presented here often revealed itself in anti-patterns and lost effort.
- I had realized very little had been cataloged, both by way of instructions and operations. Most “procedures” only existed in the memory of longtime team members. This oversight represented a risk to the business.
- A primary responsibility of mine was managing thirty plus resources across 5 locations. Our goal was for every UXer to begin to deliver value within their first 6 weeks at Workiva. By failing to properly onboard resources and overseeing a distributed team, there was a clear pattern of why some succeeded, and others struggled.
where did i fit in?
Roles & Responsibilities
I recognized the risk presented to the business and raised the concern that we needed to focus on the UX department onboarding. After securing our CTO’s support, I took ownership of the task delivering a successful UX Team onboarding process.
02.
I led the effort to gather, author, and iterate through these new processes for my team. I enthusiastically selected, collaborated with, and sought feedback from my UX management organization.
As I actively user-tested our new onboarding process, I engaged new employees during their interviewing process and finalizing the negotiation of these new hires. It was my responsibility that they were successful at Workiva.
Scope & Constraints
project considerations
The train doesn’t stop! In the midst of solving this operational challenge, we were actively interviewing, hiring, and growing the UX organization.
02.
Often, operational or administrative improvements take a back seat to profitability. While this project was supported upstream, its progress required balance with existing OKR’s.
03.
It was important than any initial ideas I had were shared with UX managers downstream, external departments, and corporate leadership, ensuring the opportunity for feedback & collaboration.
Identifying The
User Personas
We had two sets of personas. I’ll refer to them as internal UXers and external stakeholders.
Our internal personas consisted of designers, researchers, content writers, and video producers. Their motivations centered around joining our UX organization, contributing to a high level and continuing to mature in their careers. They often were young in their journey and required little technical support, but often lacked exposure to administrative and operational functions. More mature team members were more likely to engage early with questions, looking for areas where this opportunity differed from their previous engagement.
External personas consisted primarily of product managers and company leadership. Product managers were key peers of the UX organization and could provide insight into critical areas that should be included. Company leadership helped with accountability, ensuring the onboarding program that was being implemented, complied with HR policies, and aligned with Workiva objectives.
Product Discovery
Process
Design Concepts
As the department head, I engaged my UX managers to understand their needs and identify opportunities. A series of collaborative sessions helped us build an affinity map. This artifact visualized the framework of the items we were focused on collectively.
As a way to verify our findings, we held numerous shareouts. We actively sought input and items that we should include or areas we missed.
After building the first deck and walking existing team members through the process, we invited additional feedback and felt that we had a strong first offering.
User Testing
The beauty of user testing this new internal tool was grounded in our active hiring status. Almost immediately, we had our latest addition to the team fly to Bozeman and spend a week walking through the onboarding process.
Iterate & Define MVP
After iterating through 3 employee onboardings and refining the content, I felt confident enough to let the rest of the existing team see the fruit of our efforts. Additional feedback was delivered, and changes made. We recognized areas of the onboarding process we needed to include in future rounds.
Build / Measure / Learn
Unlike a traditional SaaS offering, my “product” lived as a slide deck. Not only did we benefit from our new team members joining us in Bozeman, but in the consecutive weeks, I scheduled follow-up 1:1’s. These meetings educated me on how they were integrating into their team and the outstanding questions they had. Based on these learnings, we continued to evolve our onboarding process. Each time learning areas and new things, we needed to focus on during a new team member joined us.
At the six month anniversary of a team member joining us, I set a new goal of meeting with the UXer to understand where they were and the questions that remained in how we operated within Workiva’s structure.
In Closing
Outcomes & Lessons
02.
03.
User Testing Feedback
“One of the main reasons I am joining Workiva is the passion and clear process you have for onboarding new employees. I am looking at 2 other offers, but, none of them come close to Workiva. This is the deciding factor to join your UX Team.”
Senior UX Designer
Joined August 2019
What I’m Currently Reading…
Atomic Design
by Brad Frost
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