Case Study
    AI

Designing a Habit-building OKR Software to Boost Productivity

Background

Where goal setting is seen as burdensome, productivity is bound to decline

Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is a framework for companies to align their quarterly goals with their most important priorities. Additionally, OKRs also play a crucial role in bringing a cultural and behavioral shift in organizations.

Existing enterprise OKR tools are often part of a bouquet of admin-management systems. They fail to meet user expectations due to their rigid functionality and outdated UI. This makes drafting the Objectives a complex task for employees who struggle to match them with their roles and responsibilities.

From the management perspective, tracking OKRs, documenting their progress, and creating reports are time-consuming tasks that leave considerable room for errors. It also makes managing the alignment of goals across teams nearly impossible, with collaboration and accountability becoming lost between the lines.

Problem Statement

Existing OKR software lacked the finesse in terms of form (UI) and function (UX) to support employees to draft the right objectives and enable managers to validate and track them, causing a misalignment between Objectives and Key Results, and impacting productivity and business goals in the long run.

Goal

To design an OKR software which ensures that Objectives and Key Results be top-of-mind for its users and seamlessly integrate with the way they plan, assign, and execute their duties.

UX Strategy

We devised a UX strategy to design an OKR software with a minimal, user-friendly UI that enables users to draft their Objectives accurately and with ease, gain approval for them in minimal time, track their own progress through visual, intuitive mediums, and gain ownership of their mission and contribution to the company.

Design Proccess

A data-driven methodology to identify the right problem to be solved

Our design process is focused on crafting products that are easy to use, accessible, and a delight to interact with. We place the user at the center of our creative process, ensuring that every aspect of our design is clutter-free, intuitive, and scalable. By prioritizing usability and engagement, we strive to create designs that provide an unforgettable and fabulous experience for our users.

UX Process – Research → Synthesis → Ideation → Design

Research

Discovering user needs and pain points and identifying the right areas of opportunity

We started by conducting user interviews along with frequent meetings with subject matter experts to collect information that helped in forming user personas and a typical user journey map.

User group 

  • Between ages 25-45
  • 50-500 users

Methods used

  • Stakeholder/user interviews
  • Personas
  • Journey mapping
  • User stories

Existing enterprise OKR software were observed to have a cluttered UI and came packed with multiple unnecessary features, making the OKR process unduly complex and rigid.

Ideation

Identifying the appropriate solution through iterative testing

With user adoption and engagement becoming important metrics, we focused on removing the two biggest barriers –

  • The difficulty involved in drafting goals accurately
  • Ensuring they are approved and followed

We applied the principles of Minimalism and leveraged content and visual hierarchy to guide the user through the workflow by subconsciously driving their focus over the path directed by logic and mental models.

We made multiple variations based on the above direction to be tested with the users.

Direction 1:

Direction 2:

Following the results of the rigorous testing, the solution would have to be designed based on these takeaways –

  • Retaining only the most essential and necessary components and features to ensure that the user’s focus is trained on one task at a time.
  • A UI with a calm and inviting appearance based on the principles of neumorphism and glassmorphism to make users feel comfortable and at ease.
  • An aid or assistant which discreetly proffers help in drafting KPIs, empowering the users to draft them more efficiently.

Design

Transforming validated ideas into reality

Our minimalist OKR software was built on the concept of ‘less is more’ so the focus is just where it needs to be. Rather than having the user explore and wonder what they must do, the UI was built around guiding them to take the right actions.

Style_guide_Mobile

Easy-to-access navigation on the left side on a sleek and scalable strip

Search, Notifications, and Profile are placed on the top-right, adhering to mental models

The AI-powered Smart Assistant floats discreetly in the corner, ensuring easy access

Status indicators help the user determine different states and scenarios as they interact with the workflow

Last section image

Impact

User trials revealed a 32% drop in the time taken from drafting objectives to approving them based on the key results.

68% responded that the platform’s form and functionality enabled better tracking and management of goals.

For businesses, this translates to a consistent increase in productivity as creating and tracking OKRs is no longer cumbersome to employees and managers.

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