Overview: The creation of onboarding tools became a big initiative for Ascentis as it looked forward to its market expectations for 2019. The design team was tasked with creating a mobile-friendly tool employees could use to complete the onboarding process at their companies. This was a product that would be marketed to companies who could leverage the tool to onboard their new employees.

How I worked: The pre-planning of the Ascentis product team allowed me ample time to approach this new tool in an ideal way by leveraging user research to understand the needs of the users before we began development. By working with client specialists, I was able to compile a list of potential clients who were amicable to being contacted. I invited these clients to partake in a special research group for this initiative, where their feedback could directly impact the creation of this new tool.

Once the research group was established, I created a survey using SurveyMonkey to gather qualitative and quantitative data from our clients. I then organized the data using Trello cards to help visualize the most important insights. This board was used to both track the data and to drive initial discussions around what our clients expected from this new tool. Once the user’s most desired features were formally understood, I created a PowerPoint presentation to display our findings and recommendations to stakeholders.

With a direction in mind and buy-in from our stakeholders, I set about creating functional prototypes using UXPin. At regular intervals I met with clients from our already established research group to conduct usability tests and garner feedback on our direction. Due to this, I was able to iterate on the design to match expectations and refocus on aspects that our clients were most positively responding to.