Rockhopper
Rockhopper is set out to solve a common challenge in finance: how to streamline and simplify teamwork across departments, whether team members were finance experts or not. Their vision was a SaaS platform that made collaborative annotation intuitive, helping users complete complex financial tasks more efficiently and with greater alignment among teams.
Context
Kicking Off With Rockhopper
During my UX boot camp at General Assembly, I teamed up with two other UX designers (Archana & Rebecca) to work with Rockhopper, a startup developing a collaborative platform for financial teams. Our task was to apply user-centered insights to shape an intuitive product that would streamline financial workflows and enhance teamwork across departments.
Deliverables:
Shape a MVP
Product's Core Values:
Ease of use
Efficiency
Context
Kicking Off with Rockhopper
During my UX boot camp at General Assembly, I teamed up with two other designers to work with Rockhopper, a startup developing a collaborative platform for financial teams. Our task was to apply user-centered insights to shape an intuitive product that would streamline financial workflows and enhance teamwork across departments.
Deliverables:
Shape a MVP
Product's Core Values:
Ease of use
Efficiency
The user interviews revealed key problem areas…
Communication: Users rely on spreadsheets for data entry and team communication, preferring to avoid calls due to their time-consuming nature. They value clear, transparent processes that others can easily follow.
Coordination: Users often pull data and information from multiple platforms, highlighting the need for streamlined workflow
User Interviews
6 People who use spreadsheets daily
Research Goals:
To understand the user journey of those working collaborative working on spreadsheets
To better understand spreadsheet sharing and communication pain points for the sender and receivers
User Research
Understanding Spreadsheet Users
After aligning with Rockhopper, we aimed to deepen our understanding of potential users, specifically focusing on identifying pain points in their collaborative spreadsheet workflows. We also wanted to explore challenges around sharing and communication for both senders and receivers.
Grant (Sender)
Core Needs
Clear data organization and communication
A way to track changes
Frustration
Dislikes long meetings going over spreadsheets.
Disorganized with team member
User Persona and Journey Map
Meeting The Users
Using these insights, I created a user journey map and user persona to pinpoint where users experience the most frustration when collaborating on spreadsheets with their teams. Understanding the journey was crucial for both users sending the document and those receiving it.
Grant: The Sender
Remy "The Marketer"
Remy "The Marketer"
Remy (Receiver)
Core Needs
Need to understand spreadsheets
Frustration
Disconnect between her team and finance team
Dislike long meeting going over spreadsheets
Main points of frustration:
The sender's main frustration is switching to multiple platforms when collaborating.
Explaining the spreadsheet to non-financial professional that often leads to lengthy meetings and messaging.
Main points of frustration:
Trying to make sense of confusing spreadsheets.
Long calls going over spreadsheets.
Identifying Key Challenges
What Can We Do?
We centered our design efforts around the issues identified in the journey maps, with a clear focus on the primary frustration: communication between teams. Our design priority is to enhance communication and reduce the cognitive load on users' working memory. It was apparent that we need to minimize the need to switch between messaging and actual work, we need to create a seamless and efficient workflow for users.
How does working memory affect the workflow?
Each switch users to make requires a mental "refresh".
Takes up valuable cognitive resources
Frequent switching can quickly overwhelm working memory leading to mistakes, fatigue, and slower task completion
How might we…
Reduce cognitive load and minimize switching between tasks.
Allow teams to communicate clearly, facilitate offline collaboration, and streamline their workflow.
Build confidence that the document is being understood and used correctly.
Solution
A Tasking Feature!
Through several ideation phases, we determined that a tasking feature would be an effective way to reduce cognitive load and minimize strain on users' working memory. This feature will also facilitate offline collaboration, reducing the need for lengthy calls to reach an understanding across teams. Ultimately, this approach will allow users to focus more on the work itself rather than the process of coordinating with others.
The tasking feature needs to:
Clearly indicate the purpose of each cell for data entry.
Allow tasks to be assigned to specific team members.
The sender begins by selecting the cells where they want the receiver to input data. They can add insights to explain each cell's purpose, ensuring the receiver understands the context of the data they’re entering.
Sketches
The Initial Idea: Right Side Bar
We chose to place the tasking feature on the right side, allowing users to assign tasks while working directly within the spreadsheet. This setup lets users view the data as they assign tasks, reducing cognitive load by eliminating the need to switch to a new page. It also streamlines the workflow, keeping all essential actions within a single, accessible interface.
The sender then adds the task name and a message for the receiver, providing the necessary details to complete the task. This setup supports offline collaboration by ensuring the receiver has all the information needed.
"This will make it easier for me to collaborate with my team member since I work with a large set of data”- Quant
Usability Testing
How Did The Users React To The Design
Users appreciated the ability to assign tasks while referencing large amounts of data. All 6 users were able to complete the usability tests. However, they found the right sidebar confusing, often mistakenly referring to the left navigation bar instead. Additionally, they felt that the flow between insights and tasks was unclear.
Why were the users confused?
Order between insights and task assignment: It made more sense for the users if they first input the task and then the insights.
Decision paralysis: The design overwhelmed users with too many options, such as subtasks, which became counterproductive and added to the cognitive load.
What did the users like?
Right side bar: The users felt like the right side bar works well when working with data because it makes it easier to refer to the data when collaborating with teammates.
Creating the task
To reduce cognitive load, we simplified the task creation process into sequential steps, providing a user-guided walkthrough to minimize errors and decisions paralysis.
Iteration: How did we tackle the design problem?
Final Design
We removed unnecessary icons that caused confusion and replacing them with clearly labeled tabs. During usability testing, users expressed difficulty in understanding the previous layout, indicating that the icons were not intuitive and added to cognitive overload.
Simplifying the right side bar:
Assigning task to specific team member
In our initial design, assigning a task to a team member was placed at the end of the process. However, users found it more intuitive to assign the task at the beginning. We aimed to provide users with the flexibility to either click and select or search for team members.
When a task is sent, users can view it within the chat with the team member it was assigned to. This setup facilitates communication about the task directly.
Sending the task:
Conclusion
How did the Client Like The Design?
We presented our research findings and design to the client (Rockhopper), and with the recent changes, they were very pleased with the MVP. They praised our design and considered it a successful first design for their product.
However, further work is needed to better understand and streamline the workflow to allow spreadsheet users to communicate more effectivley. This is not the final design, as we’ve handed off recommendations for to explore different design ideas to effectively reduce cognitive load for users in future iterations.