Workday Learning’s new home and navigation experience.
Workday provides cloud-based responsive and mobile software for human resources (HR) and financial professionals (FIN) to simplify workforce management tasks such as payroll, scheduling, employee onboarding, time tracking, learning, talent management, and performance evaluations. Workday has ~12,000 global clients and employs ~18,000 people worldwide.
Overview.
Project roles.
My role.
Senior UX designer.
Responsible for leading discovery/delivery of Workday Learning Home/Discover experience.
Size of the project team.
- Senior project designer (me)
- 7 UX designers
- 1 content designer
- 1 accessibility designer
- 20 Developers
- 4 researchers
- 2 executive sponsors
Project duration.
13 months, 2020 - 2021.
(subsequent project work-streams are ongoing)
Summary.
Workday Learning’s key user groups are those who take required learning courses in order to be compliant in their roles. Some industries are more learning regulation-heavy than others, with airlines, manufacturing and retail sectors needing many users to complete high volumes of required compliance learning before they are allowed to start/continue to do their job.
For these groups of users, the Workday Learning experience had some key areas which needed improvement. (i) the findability of required and in-progress Workday Learning courses (ii) awareness of the breadth of courses offered within the Workday Learning catalogue (iii) ease of navigating lessons within learning courses.
During this project we focused on improving (i) the in-app Workday Learning navigation experience for users looking to find and complete their compliance training (ii) the way information was categorised and presented on the Workday Learning homescreen to support discovery (iii) the setup process for learning admins creating required learning paths for their employees.
Details.
Problems to solve.
Findability of required and in-progress Workday Learning courses. One of the key problems for the project team to solve was that users were getting notifications of required learning courses which they had to complete by a certain date, but when they open the Workday Learning app the learning course wasn’t easily found. This is a serious problem especially in industries which may curtail employee access to job sites if certain training material isn’t completed on time.
Awareness of the breadth of courses offered within the Workday Learning catalogue. Workday Learning tasks typically fall into 2 categories: required learning and discovery learning. For required learning users will receive inbox notifications which will take them directly to the courses they need to complete. But discovery learning relies on quality search and browse functionality which displays learning content to users that they may wish to consume based on previous courses taken or skills and interests they’ve added qithin Workday.
Ease of navigating lessons within learning courses. Workday Learning courses and learning paths can be assembled and organised at tenant level by customer administrators. Setting navigation guardrails and governance for best practice creation of these course and paths is key for making the experiences intuitive and simple for users to complete.
Key Objectives.
Increase efficiency for Learning administrators as they create learning paths and learning course solutions for their employees.
Increase the findability of learning courses for users who are in ‘discovery mode’
Increase user confidence in the stability and findability of required learning materials assigned to them.
Make it easy and enjoyable for users to navigate learning sections from Workday Learning/Home.
Users we’re solving for.
Learning administrators. Admin users who operate at a customer tenant level creating learning paths and learning courses for their employees.
End users who take required Workday Learning courses to be compliant in their role. Frontline workers are key consumers of Workday Learning. Most often the learning courses assigned to them by their learning administrator are required learning for their role that needs to be completed by a due date in order for them to continue working. Some industries are more regulation-heavy than others, with airlines, manufacturing and retail sectors needing users to complete high volumes of required compliance learning.
Delivery Method.
Phase 1 : Understanding the problems we’re solving.
Research gathering, user interviews, customer interviews, stakeholder alignment workshops, project team knowledge sharing workshop activities.
Phase 2 : Defining key objectives and success metrics.
Defining JTBD (Jobs TO Be Done), user journey mapping, service blueprints, stakeholder and project team workshops.
Phase 3 : Executive green-lighting.
Presentations, alignment workshops, knowledge sharing sessions.
Phase 4 : Project planning.
Roadmapping, Gant charting, effort estimations, resource allocation, Jira Epics.
Phase 5 : Delivery and testing of MVP solutions.
Lo-fi solutions IA and UI solutions prototyped and tested with a sample cohort of users.
Solutions to be developed are storymapped and broken out into sprints.
MVP solutions are released to EA (earlier adopter) customers for feedback and iteration.
Phase 6 : Communications and launch.
Communication strategy implemented for target customers: Comms roadshows, interactive live sessions, DPGs (design partner groups) arranged with EA customers for feedback and iteartion .
Phase 7 : User testing and iteration.
Research feedback sought from a wider cohort of end users. Findings synthesised and delivered to the project team for backlog planning and iteration.
Outcomes.
Measuring success.
Increased completion rates of on-time compliance based training.
Uptake in the number of users across industries who actively searched to discover follow-on learning courses after their required training was completed.
Increased customer satisfaction on the features and experiences offered for Learning Admins setting up and configuring Workday Learning paths within customer tenants.
Lessons learned.
Involving design & research stakeholders during early roadmap and customer discovery phases of the projects can lead to more confidence for teams in the alignment of project, design, development and QA priorities as the project progresses.
Scheduling regular paired design activities during the project between UX and development team members can lead to better UI solutions than if this relationship is left to develop organically between individuals.
Involving all team members in design sprints and design critiques strengthens cross-collaboration and increases diversity of opinion taken into consideration for design decisions.
What to change going forward.
Design should own organising and facilitating early stakeholder alignment sessions between, product, design, research and development. Without design’s involvement these session may well happen, but will be heavily focused on business and customers needs and may not include awareness of of end-user considerations.
Design should be intentional about including product and development partners in design sprints, IA workshops and research activities. Creating opportunities for early discovery and feedback between cross-functional partners sets the tone for the team’s way of working before sprint cycles take over.