Overview
Ding is a time attendance SaaS for small-mid-sized businesses in Iran (mobile app + BT device).
To address the growth challenges, during 9 months of collaboration with Ding as a team of 2 ( UX designer + Business Designer), we went through deep rounds of research, ideation and test from strategy to surface, from value proposition to user interface.
This case study is focused on my contribution as the UX designer to this amazing journey.
Challenge
Increasing churn rate
Rising competition
These two made Ding to assume “they need a new product with full set of new features.”
Outcome
55% of reduction in churn rate.
25% of increase in revenue.
43% of increase in demo conversion rate.
Role
I actively collaborated with amazing Parinoosh Parchami (Business Designer) to address issues of all layers. My contribution included:
Conducting workshops
User interviews
Competitive analysis
Heuristic evaluation
Personas
Journey maps
User flows
Information architecture
Wireframing
Prototyping (Lo-Hi)
UI design
Usability test
Process
Our approach spanned from strategic planning to redesigning of flows, information architecture, UI, and the development of a new vision and value proposition.
Pre-defined hypothesis from the Ding point of view was that "lack of features is the reason behind the increasing churn rate and loosing customers."
Other findings:
Unclear target audience.
No data to prove assumptions are valid.
Who Users Are?
I requested customers data from CRM to analyze and get first insights.
Why They Left?
I curated interviewees based on the 1. Customer data we had analyzed, 2. Previous surveys done by Ding and 3. Data I gathered in meetings with Ding's team and stakeholders.
Goals
What are the goals, pains, and motivations of currents users?
What are the obstacles they are facing when using ding?
What are their real problems in the context of managing employees and tracking the time?
5
Ex-users
7
Current Users
5
Potential Users
Key Takeaways
1
Current features could address most of current users' needs, although Usability Issues with the product seems to play a great role in the user's confusion, dissatisfaction and churn.
2
Not every one clearly knows about features of the product.
3
Using the data for calculating the salaries is challenging and takes much effort and time.
How does the product perform?
I zoomed in to the product by doing a heuristic evaluation and then conducted a usability test with 5 participants ( both new and current users) to find problems and opportunities for improvement.
Key tasks were asked to get done.
Metrics I monitored: - Task success rate - Task duration
Key Findings
1
There's no clear instruction
The need to call the support makes it very insufficient. not everyone likes to get instructions on phone.
Video tutorial are not accessible.
Almost zero success to set up and use the app without a call to support center.
Today Status / main page
Side bar
2
Although Ding has the ability to create shifts and assign to them, but the current task flow makes is almost impossible for users with changing shifts and working hours without a specific pattern.
Creating shifts, adding employees and assigning employees is very challenging.
3
Micro Copies are not consistent and confusing.
The design is outdated and far from brand identity.
Inconsistency in layout.
How does competition
look like?
I researched the competitors to understand the competitive landscape and discover threats and opportunities by evaluating them in different terms such as usability, features, branding, sales and support.
Reframing the problem
There are much more to be addressed on top of new features. Increasing usability metrics in combination with marketing and branding efforts while creating a new vision for Ding and moving towards the new vision is the key to overcome short term challenges as well as keeping Ding competitive in long run.
Persona
To better communicate research findings to stakeholders, I created a persona. There’s not much empathy and design culture found in Ding team.
Journey map
I used journey map to communicate and highlight opportunities to the team and stakeholders.
Challenges
Design an onboarding experience so that users learn to use mobile app fast without asking support and searching.
Redesign shift creation and employee assignment so that it covers both simple and complex shifts.
Make the salary calculation easier.
Align the interface with brand identity which itself needs a revision to align with the new value proposition “work assistant”.
Ideation
Onboarding Experience
Make first use as fast as possible without assistant.
Shift Experience
Creating and assigning shift experience should be fast and smooth and give enough information to users to get the job done.
Shift types
Creating shifts & assigning employees
Export Options
Make it easy for users to calculate salaries by:
Different export options.
Ready-to-use export files compatible with accounting softwares.
Integration with accounting softwares.
Export options
Information Architecture
I also refined and edited information architecture to make specific pages discoverable as well as shortening flows. Below is an example:
Information architecture refinement
Testing Ideas
Next, I did another round of user test with 5 new users. I asked participants to perform key tasks using lo-fi prototypes in Figma such as:
Follow onboarding screens to set up their account.
Create shifts and assign employees.
Define workspaces and assign people.
75%
35%
Visual Design
Coming to redesigning the interface, I had to first redesign the brand identity aligned with new vision and value proposition, so that I can develop UI on that solid foundation.
Impact
To measure the results I calculated monthly churn rate for 3 months and compared it to previous periods. (considering only new customers using updated product)
9%
Decrease in
churn rate
12%
18%
Reflection
As an integral part of a larger project that encompassed Business Design and Strategy, I had the invaluable opportunity to learn from our talented business designer and team members, acquiring a wealth of new knowledge and skills.
One of the most challenging aspects was convincing stakeholders to prioritize the design process before making assumptions, which taught me valuable lessons about effectively communicating the value of design to clients.
Despite the increased workload and time constraints resulting from overseeing the entire UX process and actively contributing to the Business Design process, I successfully applied my expertise in time and project management, further refining these essential skills.
Next
Looking ahead, my next steps will be:
Continuous monitoring of metrics ( churn rate, demo conversion rate ), along with user feedback, and iterating as needed to sustain success.
Defining a product roadmap towards the new vision.
Conducting ideation and test rounds to design and develop new features in alignment with the product roadmap.