Cornerstone OnDemand

Conversation

Conversation is a note-taking tool that provides sync-ups, collaboration and project tracking employees within the company’s ecosystem.

The Background / Overview

The company Cornerstone Ondemand had a few products. Within the product pillar Performance, there were a few products such as Goals and Development Plan, which were aimed to help employees stay on track in their career growth. Conversation was the latest addition to this product pillar.

My Role

Product Designer


Project span

3 months (MVP)

Stakeholders

Product Managers,
Front-end Engineers


Users

Managers, employees, and business administrators.

The Problem / Overview

The clients reflected that they wanted a product that helps them to better track an employee’s work throughout the year. The problem was that much work progress went undocumented, and this matters when companies were using self-documented formats to do performance reviews. Retention rates were lower as a result reflected in some clients.

The Problem / Problem Statement

How can we help our customers, both management and employees, to better track work progress at one place throughout?

The Solution / 1 Week Design Sprint

The PM threw in a design sprint workshop in aiming for the MVP release in 2 months.
Participants were 2 product managers, 3 front-end engineers, 2 backends, and 1 designer (me).

Discovery on day 1: What does our users want

HR admins:

  • Ability to provide Conversations guidelines & talking points

  • Ability to measure engagement frequency between staff

Managers

  • Ability to track work progress

  • Ability to sync up quickly & regularly.

  • Ability to use Conversations templates for guidance.

Employees:

  • Ability to share work progress

  • Ability to sync up quickly & regularly.

  • Ability to self-provide performance review quickly.

After discovery, user interviews, defining problem statement, here’s a vision of what Coversation product could be:

  1. It lives in an internal ecosystem where managers, employees, and HR admins are all in one place.

  2. It fuels the need of an internal note taking tool, by providing additional features such as the ability to add company and individual goals and dev plans, all in one source of truth.

  3. It is exportable into a report, and essentially replaces traditional performance reviews and saves time.

The Solution / Final UIs

The design below reflects the MVP designs in the sequencing flow of:

Home page -> Select a Conversation template -> Select a participant -> Start a conversation -> Select a goal attachment example

  • Home

  • Select a Conversation

  • Select a participant

  • Conversation started

  • Select a Goal

The Success Matrix / Results

Conversations was then used by many clients, including internal Cornerstone employees at an adoption rate of 74% within the first year.

The Success Matrix / What did I learn from this project?

Here are some points I’ve learned:

  • Technical challenges are often present. However, we can always work around planning features and execution in bite sizes without drastically changing the design.

  • Having strong input from the design side is crucial in any design sprint process. We should be involved in early project development and discussion. Our voice is important in shaping product direction.

  • A strong opinion comes with an understandable reason. The key to a great working relationship is to understand that reason and be able to sympathize.

  • It feels good to work with teammates who enjoy the divide-and-conquer attitude. We all contribute.

  • Project direction can change often. The key is to adapt and put focus on the now.