PRO Unlimited Product Design Internship
For Summer 2022, I was a Product Design Intern at PRO Unlimited on the RatePoint (Total Talent Intelligence) team.
Role
Product Designer
Team
Internal Case Study
Duration
Tools
3 months (Jun. 2022 – Aug. 2022)
figma, Balsamiq, Jira
Overview
Part of PRO’s wide range of services, RatePoint is an HR management app that provides compensation analysis and hiring information for contingent workers for employers and compensation analysts. The platform contains holistic features such as pay rate comparison, candidate suggestions, and hiring info for oversea candidates.
In the span of 90 days, I was challenged to conduct an internal audit and improve the app experience. With the help of the product and engineering team, I rebuilt the end-to-end experience of the primary features: compensation rate search and data visualization.
KICKOFF
Where it All Began
The promise of PayRate is straightforward: an HR management tool that offers compensation insights on contingent workers. However, the rate search experience on the current app is inefficient and largely disorganized. A potential user generally has to look up the pay rate of a job title through numerous filter settings with no directions. The significant amount of data with unclear labeling and hierarchy makes the rate search process extremely confusing and inaccessible.
Before getting into the nitty gritty of my research, I focused on the big picture. Who is the primary user? What are their pain points? How would this app differ from existing compensation analysis platforms? After my initial audit, I identified 2 overarching needs: intuitive data visualization and simplifying the rate search user flow.
Navigating business tools with big data can be gnarly, but users shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to access the pay rate information they need.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Early Discovery: External Audit
Constructing RatePoint’s position in the market, I ventured out and conducted an analysis of current competitors. I evaluated popular features based on external audit and identified missing functions that RatePoint could possibly utilize.
(writing something and then put a graph)
PRODUCT AUDIT
Internal Inspection: What’s Missing?
Design Objective
Poorly formed user flow and interface caused inefficient search experience
Painpoints
STAKEHOLDERS MAPPING
Meet the Users
To really get a feel for the target users, I created personas based on our clients so that I can jump into the users’ shoes and really uncover their needs and prioritized features.
Info Architecture
Low-Fi Wireframes
Before embarking onto high fidelity mockups, I brainstormed on potential UI designs, illustrating wireframes to get a feel for the app and its core features.
Interaction Decision
How do I make it intuitive for users to navigate between rate search, search history, and rate search result? I prototyped 3 different types of interactions and tested to find the easiest one.
Findings: In the testing, the result shows the search filter labor-intensive and the header with hamburger menu unclear.
Based on the results, I decided on the collapsable left navigation, removed search filters that are confusing, and iterated on the original wireframes. With these design decisions in place, I was ready to create the full prototype.
Hi-Fi Prototypes