Addressing manager pain points to improve the employee onboarding experience
June 2022 – September 2023
Figma, FigJam
Laura Yien (Product Design) and Alexis Queen (UX Research)
During Summer 2022, I had the opportunity to intern at Workday, a human resources and financial software company based in Pleasanton, California. I was a product design intern on the People Experience Design Team working on the Journeys product, which allows companies to provide tailored experiences and learning modules to guide employees through career transitions. These are curated by administrators and distributed to employees. While I am not able to share specifics about my intern project due to non-disclosure agreements, this is a brief overview of this valuable learning experience.
For my internship, I was paired with UX Research intern Alexis Queen to work on a visionary project related to Journeys. Our initial prompt was centered around improving an employee’s first week at a company. However, when we started conducting generative research by interviewing managers and new hires, we found that there was greater opportunity in designing for manager needs rather than new hires. As a result, we shifted our focus to designing Journeys features for managers.
The final solution was to integrate managers into Journeys via the Workday Home Page and a new Journeys Dashboard designed for this project. The solution was demonstrated through a high-fidelity prototype illustrating these key user flows.
As the product designer on this project, my focus was on developing the designs of our project. I presented these designs in weekly design critiques and received feedback from mentors, designers, product managers, and design directors.
I started my process by sketching concepts and then developed wireframe iterations in Figma. I worked with Alexis to conduct usability testing with our mid fidelity wireframes. After synthesizing our findings, I worked to implement those changes and develop a high-fidelity prototype. I presented our process and final prototype to designers, team members, and directors at the end of my internship.
Collaboration is essential. Since the Workday system is so complex and designs change quickly, it is essential to communicate with cross functional design and product teams. I not only collaborated with product designers, UX researchers, and product managers on the Journeys team, but also with designers on other product teams like Workday Today (Workday homepage). I learned how to design within a large product system and how to utilize existing infrastructure to integrate our concept into Workday.
When navigating ambiguity, look to user research for guidance. Through this internship, I learned of the importance of narrowing down scope to make approaching an ambiguous project more manageable. At first, I had so many ideas that the project felt overwhelming, however with the help of research findings and insights I was able to narrow down our focus to complete our project. I learned that when making design decisions, I am making my best guess about what the user will prefer. I will not be 100% right all the time, which is why it is important to lean on UX research partners.
Documentation is key to communication. Throughout my internship, I was responsible for documenting my work and current progress and tasks for each week. I found that my manager and team gained greater confidence in my ability to complete my project because I had been documenting my work and communicating my progress with them. Increased transparency led to better communication and confidence throughout the project.
Overall, I would like to thank Workday for this opportunity, and the lessons I have learned will be invaluable as I continue to grow as a product designer.