In-System Guidance

Paycom has identified the need to improve their In-System Guidance (ISG) and onboarding process for new or complex features and products, as most support requests coming in from the end users were concerning basic task performance. With this project, we aimed to increase user satisfaction, reduce support requests concerning usage of company products, and improving task performance efficiency.

As a global project, our objective was to create a design system composed of principles, guidelines, and visual references with sample products to ensure a scalable solution.

To better understand the project, we conducted interviews with our stakeholders concerning the project scope and expectations. As a result, following outlines were made:

The project success will be defined by the drop in support requests, since the users wouldn’t have to contact their service representatives to understand our products.

The users of this project include both internal and external end users. The internal user can refer to the product designers, who would utilize our system to create an ISG for a specific product of their interest. The external or end users refer to the actual users of Paycom products who will be interacting with the ISGs created by the standards created by this project.

We will have a three tiered approach to our products that will utilize ISG. Each tiers will consist of different UI patterns and strategies involving learning theory. The definition of these tiers will fluctuate as project progresses.

With the clear outline of the project, our preliminary research started with the basics of onboarding practices in the UX industry. We explored the best practices of product tours and discovered patterns from a number of product tour softwares.
Our research allowed us to dive deep into software communication patterns and diverse UI modules, which eventually served as a good starting point for our initial sketches and ideation.

In order to align our project with Paycom's standards, our next phase of research included experts in two main areas: accessibility and learning theory.

Accessible design is a design process in which the needs of people with disabilities are specifically considered. It allows users of all abilities to understand, use and enjoy the product we create. One of the core values of Paycom is “We Care” — creating solutions to make life better for all. In order to attend to this value, Paycom product conforms to WCAGS 2.1 accessibility standards. Through series of interviews, we learned best practices for accessible design to incorporate into our project.

Since Paycom products are targeted towards client companies and therefore adult users, the ISG must also utilize the concept of learning theory for adults in order to effectively communicate hard-to-grasp concepts and flows within Paycom products. We became familiar with the concept of andragogy and instructional design methodology for this purpose.

With the information collected through the preliminary research, we first created an assumption map to lay out the foundations for our upcoming user interviews.

We focused on the first quadrant to devise questions that will be addressed in our user interviews, since they were assumptions that need to be addressed before any further progress can be made.

Since the ISG is a global project, it is difficult to discern a specific user set for the project itself. Therefore, we decided on two specific Paycom products to define our user base and to test the ISG on. The two products were chosen based on our earliest definition of Tiers 2 and 3.

Our first product for demonstrating Tier 2 was Custom Employee Service tool, which allowed our client companies to rebrand their Employee webpages using personalized colors and logos.

Since this was an already deployed product with multiple user reviews, we were able to collect direct user feedback while also conducting a usability test on the product.

Our second product for demonstrating Tier 3 was the Enrollment tool, which provides a course assignment workflow for internal learning materials. This product was in its own project phase for redesigning. Therefore, we were able to interview related designers, project managers, and users to gain insight to the challenges users would potentially face. Based on these observations, we mapped out the user journey to note what to target with the ISG.

Our findings spanned from sample product-specific problems to best market practices. These will provide the basis of how the ISG will be structured and designed. For example, we learned that for the Enrollment tool, we must focus our ISG design to assist the users with several confusing concepts including the idea of 'conditions'. The teaching process will encompass learning theories of andragogy, by using intentional word choices and providing motivation.
In order to synthesize the scattered concepts, we created an affinity map that grouped the findings based on the subject and target.

Our first steps of the design phase composed of defining the three tiers and creating preliminary sketches. At this stage, we also created several different iterations of ISG components, stemming from — but not limited to — the Paycom UI library. Following are some component designs and mockups at this design iteration:

We also explored design options of triggers , which would allow the users to re-visit the ISG:

We cycled through design iterations for a several weeks as we collected feedback from other designers, made comparisons with the market practices, and performed user testing.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our designs and practices, we prototyped the ISG onto the two sample products and performed usability testing. We created tasks, success criteria, user flows, and more.

We tested 5+ users for each of the prototypes made for the two sample products in tiers 2 and 3. We were able to gather the most relevant / pressing information about the current design by synthesizing the high level observations into a chart format. The insights gathered from these practices eventually lead to our later steps of design iterations, where we re-defined the scope to incorporate a more detailed solution for power users, namely In-System Learning (ISL). It is a product-specific modal component of ISG that provides an additional layer of context and learning opportunities for users looking for more detailed explanation on certain concepts or terms within the product.

During the 12 weeks of internship, I was able to conduct various forms of research, create and iterate on multiple designs and prototypes, conceptualize a product, and prepare an MVP ready for hand off. Going through the full design process as such proved both challenging and enriching to me. As a non-design student lacking many areas of basic design principles and methodologies, I learnt a great deal on what steps to take in order to best understand the users in concern and to create the best solutions possible.

Apart from the fundamentals of product design, this experience has matured me as a team designer. I learned how to work with different ideas and perspectives, while also taking in motivation from sharing thoughts and questions. Looking back, I would allow myself to pursue feedback in a more proactive manner. During instances of work overload, I would communicate my needs and seek assistance that my co-workers are more than willing to share.

Special thanks to my product design intern team, Bogdan Banica, Keyan Huang, Lana Nguyen, and team lead, KP.