Thales Impact

Encourage an healthier feedback culture within Thales Group

Timeline

Jun 2019 - Aug 2019
2 month timeframe
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Process

1. Exploratory research
2. Information architecture and navigation
3. Design and test key features
4. Visual explorations
5. Crafting specs

Project overview

At Thales, a group of "intrapreneurs“ developed IMPACT, an app that encourages employees to regularly share and ask for feedback from their peers. A project that Thales group decided to accelerate and release to the whole company.
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Scaling up to the whole organisation implied replatforming, matching high security and data privacy standards. It also meant fixing and improving the current UX to maximize chances of global adoption.

1. Exploratory research

Understanding the problem space

The existing app had a high churn rate. User engagement and retention were declining each month. First, we needed to understand what motivates people to use the app instead of giving feedback in person (unique value proposition) and what caused them to leave (churn root cause). We conducted a series of 1:1 user interviews to understand the top gain and pain points.

Identifying top problems to address

Key value proposition

IMPACT helps focus on what matters and grow professionally by easily collecting feedback from different sources and tracking progression overtime.

Top causes of churn

‍1. No reciprocity, no response to my feedback, no notification when I do receive some.

2. If my colleagues stop using the app, there is no point for me to keep on using it.

3. IMPACT is hard to use and not intuitive.

2. Information architecture and navigation

Users raised a large range of usability and discoverability issues with the existing app. We decided to tackle navigation and information architecture first as its seemed to have the most negative impact on user adoption and retention.

Navigation design iterations

Research results

Labelling main nav items helped features discoverability, We had 90%success rate when users guessed what that section was about.

Current users were used to having navigation options on the bottom

The idea of having a « notification center » as main view of the app confused and disappointed

Refined solution (after testing)

Old version

New bottom navigation

New account section

3. Design and test key features

Test and learn: keep, kick or change

We did 1 to 2 weeks iterations for design and research. Before interviewing users, we listed the assumptions we were trying to test with each round of interviews. After evaluating how they performed we made decisions about what we wanted to keep, kick or change in each iterations.

Notifications

Fix or implement email, push, and in-app notifications.Suggest clear actions in each notification.

Conversations

Organised all feedback (sent, received and requested) in the same thread rather than as different entries.

Quick replies

Users can thank colleagues that sent them feedback and ask for more information

Impact coach: a failed experiment

The idea of a “fake bot” adding comments and suggesting actions within a conversation thread.Users were uncomfortable with having a third party suddenly appearing in a private exchange. It also created lots of confusion about who was talking.

4. Visual iterations

Goals and constraints

Give a fresh and friendly first impression.

Respect at least AA accessibility standards

Capitalize on front-end framework already used: Material angular

Illustrations

Illustrations played an important role: they set a friendly but serious tone. The imagery is about people, exchanges and dynamic interactions. Reassuring and inspiring empty states serve discoverability as well: they welcome new users and guide them with clear actions to take.

5. Crafting specs

Mobile-first, adapted to desktop

Current app layout and navigation did not adapt to larger displays.
We fixed this by adapting navigation and optimizing layouts for desktop viewports.

Thales Impact