Role
Product Design Intern
Responsibilities
UX Research, Usability Testing, Wireframing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Teammates
Yoni Friedman
(SE Intern),
Catriel Sabatini
(PM Intern)
Duration
4 Weeks (Design)
Overview
New features for recruiters to facilitate the follow-ups process to ideal candidates
Multiple follow-ups and scheduled send in Eightfold AI's email function are two critical features for recruiters. Recruiters can reach out to ideal candidates at the ideal timing more efficiently through these additions. The challenge of the project was how to add features to an existing platform incrementally. This project was my first project during the product design internship at Eightfold AI in the summer of 2019.
The Company
Eightfold AI:
matching qualified candidates through AI
Eightfold AI is an enterprise platform that uses artificial intelligence to identify promising candidates, reach diversity hiring goals, and retain top performers.
The User
Recruiters
Recruiters want to find the right candidate for their company efficiently.
These recruiters often track many potential candidates for one position while sourcing for multiple positions a time. Many recruiters often source their candidate beyond working hours.
Tracking multiple positions
May source after working hours
The Problem
The old email client was not efficient for recruiters to follow their leads
Usually, recruiters use the email on our platform after they found qualified candidates for their open positions. However, two major issues stopped recruiters from continuing using the email client throughout the hiring process.
Current system allows only one follow-up
Can’t schedule emails for future delivery
Current system allows only one follow-up
Can’t schedule emails for future delivery
Preliminary Research
Understanding needs and behavior patterns
To further understand the problems and expectations of the clients, we scheduled three client interviews and usability testing of the old design before I started ideation. Aside from the initial feature requests, we discovered a particular insights:
Current User Flow
Breaking down the major steps to contact a candidate
Preliminary Research Insight
Different approaches to customization
There are two major ways of reaching out to matching candidates. Some clients would reach out to a large number of candidates without customization; the other two clients preferred more personalization for a better response rate.
Satisficer
Reach out with default templates
"We'd like to reach out to a bunch of candidates at once to get a better response rate."
Maximizer
Personalization for each follow-up
"People responded to my email if I change the content based on their experience."
Current User Flow
Current Scheduled Send Design Pattern
No users have prior experience for schedule send, so I researched existing products such as Eightfold’s scheduling system and Gmail. And I found out that these scheduling products work similarly. After the user decides on the action, the system will prompt you with a module to select their ideal schedule time.
User flow from Gmail's schedule send feature.
Design Principles
Building customizations for enterprise users
After gathering the research insights, I established that we want to design the features to be working as default while allowing for customizations to accommodate both types of users.
Effective with the default template while being easily customizable
Explicit information presentation to prevent errors
Updating visual design to be consistent with the rest of the platform
Ideation
Developing for both types of users
How might we design a multiple follow-up experience for both maximizers and satisficers?
From the user interview, we decided to prioritize the major steps of the contacting process: the template, the email module, and scheduled sent. There are users who would reach out to a large number of candidates without changing the individual content, so we wanted to prioritize making sure the multiple follow-up feature works properly from an existing template. Then the user can customize the content in the current email module and choose if they want to send the email right away or send it in the future.
Proposed User Flow
Enabling new features into the current user flow
The colored steps are the major updates of the new user flow.
Testing and Iterations
Key design decisions and iterations
Based on the three external with our clients and two internal user ability tests as well as three design reviews, I went through many different explorations and iterations according to the feedback from the clients and directors.
Scheduled send
As the most technically independent new feature, we designed the scheduled send first. From designing the most ideal interaction to scoping down to an MVP, the development of the scheduled send button aligned the user goal and technical limitations.
Scheduled send pop-up on the redesigned email module
First Iteration
Ideal scenario: following up at the highest replied time
Initially, I designed a prototype for the best-case scenario, where we can suggest the optimal time based on the highest reply rate to statistically improve the scheduling experience.
Final Iteration
MVP: following up in the next two days
However, there was not enough data for such a scenario, so we defaulted on the options ("Tomorrow" and "Next Two Days" rather than business days) that the clients are used to for the initial launch.
Multiple follow-ups template
Expanding from the existing email template with a single follow-up, I added a management system for all the follow-ups. How to present time to the users' desire was the most significant change throughout the iteration.
Redesigned template with multiple follow-ups.
First Iteration
Scheduled X day(s) after the previous email
The first design suggested multiple follow-ups will be sent after X day(s) after the previous email to ensure the sequence of the follow-ups.
Follow-ups Scheduling Logic (Proposed)
Final Iteration
Adjust information presentation to match user's preference
However, after the user testing, I iterated the design because we found out they preferred X day after the initial email to calculate the number of days more easily.
Follow-ups Scheduling Logic (User Preference)
Multiple follow-ups email module
The challenge of adding multiple follow-ups into the original user flow is how to simplify the navigation system while being able to manage the individual information of every email. From subject, sending time, to the content, I iterate the layout and the user flow according to how recruiters compose their reach-out emails.
First Iteration
Utilizing tabs organize different follow-ups
By adding a tab navigation, users can manage information of the initial email and each follow-up individually. This navigation was designed for the users to work from top to bottom to ensure each email's information is correct.
Final Iteration
Moving tabs to the bottom to match how users compose emails
From usability testings, we discovered that most users thought about the follow-ups after they finish editing the initial outreach. Thus, we moved the tabs to the bottom of the window to accommodate users' writing behaviors.
Final Results
Multiple Follow-up Email Module
Integrating tabs to track multiple follow-ups
By using a tab system to the email module, users are able to keep track of the initial email and multiple follow-ups easily. They can also edit individual follow-up without changing the template. For the initial launch of the feature, we limited the ability to edit the number of follow-ups to not only reduce the adaptation period but also prevent spamming.
Multiple Follow-ups Template
Collapsing multiple follow-ups while showing the essential information
The design for this template editor focuses on making sure that the users understand each customization, such as sending time and sender. Also, I minimized the information load on a single page for the amount of content through accordions.
Schedule Send
Customized scheduling with recommendations
Similar to Gmail, the schedule send button is located on the side of the original send button as an alternative. Users can decide an ideal time themselves or select one of the given recommendations based on the following working hours.
Successfully launched at the end of August
The schedule-send feature was launched in July, and the rest of the redesign email features were launched at the end of August.
Snapshot from the launch party.
"Looking forward to playing around with the new feature. Thank you for all that you, your team and the company are doing to accommodate and push innovation on your platform. If I haven't said it before, I want to say that is an absolute pleasure to be working so closely with Eightfold!"
— One client after testing the demo
Retrospective
Learning from designing for Eightfold AI
It was a pleasure to intern as a product designer at Eightfold AI. I was able to own most of my projects throughout the internship as an intern, which means I got the opportunity to design in a realistic environment sooner than other interns. Thus, I found two major takeaways from this internship.
Constant communication is the key to a smooth development process
During the time of working as a product designer on all projects in the summer at Eightfold, I found myself valued communication even more than before. Because I was often the only designer for these new features, I checked in regularly with the PMs and the engineers to not only update them about my progress but also see if there were any blocks that I need to be aware of for continuing my design. Having this kind of constant communication made my design process extremely adaptive, and it also encouraged others to approach me with any issues.
Tradeoffs between technical limitations and ideal designs
Compared to school projects, I learned a lot from how to negotiate the tradeoffs between technical resources and user expectations. There were clients that expected a comprehensive product, yet there were also other technical priorities within the company. How to distill the core features and interactions that the users satisfy was one of the best learning experiences I got from this internship.
Group photo with the other interns that I worked with during the internship.
