Case study
1-on-1s on Home
Helping managers have better conversations with less effort by bringing 1-on-1s to the homepage.
Linked an adoption goal to a key human problem
Deep collaboration with other teams
255% increase in the weekly number of managers scheduling a 1-on-1 for the first time.
Discovery and definition
The Culture Amp homepage has historically not had too much useful content for managers & individual contributors. The business had a need to improve the Homepage that so that our customers would get more value out of our software.
I completed a review of existing research which showed that a homepage focused on people and actions resonated with employees and managers. I believed that the first place where the Homepage can start to provide value to Managers is by surfacing 1-on-1s on the Homepage.
I conducted interviews with managers using our platform, our internal People Science team as well as the 1-on-1s team to better understand the problem space.
Interview insights
Managers using CA
Managers want to understand what's coming up next for them, so that they can be prepared for the conversations they need to have about their direct reports.
They rely on input from their direct reports to help them have better conversations
People Science team
1-on-1s need to be 'Real conversations that connect and create change' in order to have the best effect.
In order to do that, 1-on-1s need to be not just status updates, they need to be co-created and co-owned by the Individual Contributors & the manager
1-on-1 team
Adoption of the features in our platform were low compared our installed base, however 1-on-1s is the most used feature in our platform.
In order to get started with 1-on-1s, a manager must schedule a 1-on-1 with their direct report.
Solution definition
Show upcoming 1-on-1s and their status to help managers be prepared to have "real conversations".
Show unscheduled 1-on-1s to managers to increase feature adoption.
Show a prompt for Individual Contributors to see the status of their upcoming 1-on-1 and encourage them to fill in their check-in.
Design exploration and testing
Early exploration
To start, I I looked at the structure of a 1-on-1 in the product to distil that content into an easily understandable, actionable element that provided value and encouraged exploration. I explored things like visual indicators on how the content might be represented & how the design might scale in terms of the number of direct reports a manager might have.
Early wireframes exploring how 1-on-1s might be shown
High fidelity designs and customer testing
Higher fidelity explorations extending on the ideas in the wireframes
Iterating on the wireframes had given me a structure for what the section could look like. I then fleshed out the wireframes using the Culture Amp UI Kit to create higher fidelity designs.
One of the concepts I identified in the wireframe was a need for a simple text representation of what was in a 1-on-1. I worked with the 1-on-1 team as well as a Content Designer to create a system of smart highlights. This system used the data that 1-on-1s generate to give a manager a preview of the 1-on-1.
Explorations of how the "smart highlights" might look like
I put these designs into a prototype to get customer feedback on the placement of the tiles as well as to understand whether the content was useful or not.
An image of the prototype I tested with customers
Customer quote
"It helps with identifying a trend that is actually quite hard to identify by yourself unless you are going through all those one on ones."
Interview insights
Highlights
Improvements
While Direct Reports are important, all users expressed a preference that the tasks be shown at the top than be moved to the middle of the page.
Final iteration and results
After release, we saw a substantial increase in adoption of 1-on-1s
54.3% increase of managers viewing 1-on-1s from the Homepage.
255% increase of managers scheduling a 1-on-1 for the first time.
What was released to customers
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