Workflows: Building the future of work management

Case Study

Role

Product Manager

Team

3 Designers

1 Chief Technology Officer

3 Engineering Managers

Duration

8 months

The Problem

As our team at Educative scaled from 50 people to over 600, a centralized repository of projects, communication, and documentation became a necessity. The existing tools provided separate solutions, requiring a lot of context switching and maintenance. To solve this problem for multiple personas across the company, we set on to build a product called Workflows.

Competitive Research

We discovered competitors across 2 main areas: documentation and project management, with a lot of new potential products on the market.

User Interviews

I started by dividing our users into two groups of 5. People Managers and Individual Contributors. The assumption was that these two groups usually have a different set of responsibilities. The goal was to identify the needs of each of these groups, how they use the existing tools for project management, and where the gaps exist in those tools.

I discovered several problems they faced with the existing tools, some excerpts can be found below.

Wireframes and User Feedback

After spending some time synthesizing our findings, and settling on MVP features I took a weekend to prototype a fully functional low fidelity wireframe containing the core experience in order to get initial feedback from the users.

Projects Homepage

This page shows a bird-eye view of all the projects on the platform

Project Detail Page

This page was bit heavy on stats, the goal was to show useful information to the users without overwhelming them. The data had to be meaningful, scannable, and actionable.

Document Page

Defining the right layout for the document page was a challenge. It is a live multiplayer document editor with auto-save. The most prominent information such as status and doc owners is at the top. The right sidebar is sticky and houses comments and tasks.

User Feedback on Wireframes

The feedback I received helped me identify how users view and track projects and their tasks. I was able to discover a lot of opportunities for design and significant room for improvement.

High Fidelity Designs

After consolidating the feedback, I moved to high fidelity designs. The designs were fully interactive with end to end flows.

Task Manager

I built a complete end-end task manager from scratch. Tasks are associated to Projects and Documents and can be assigned to anyone.

Review Manager

This feature is used to get the documents reviewed by anyone in the team. People can request reviews on their documents. The entire process can be seen in the flow here.

Project Manager

A project can be made up of several tasks and documents. It can have a due date and multiple collaborators.

Document Viewer & Editor

This is the page where users spend most of their time. It went through several iterations since so many features are dependent on it. Tasks and reviews are part of the document. It can have multiple states ranging from Not Started to Done.

More work

The work listed in this case study is a bird's eye view of the entire project that took place over the course of 8 months. More details can be shared on request for anyone interested.

Workflows: Building the future of work management

Case Study

Role

Product Manager

Team

3 Designers

1 Chief Technology Officer

3 Engineering Managers

Duration

8 months

The Problem

Competitive Research

We discovered competitors across 2 main areas: documentation and project management, with a lot of new potential products on the market.

User Interviews

I discovered several problems they faced with the existing tools, some excerpts can be found below.

Wireframes and User Feedback

After spending some time synthesizing our findings, and settling on MVP features I took a weekend to prototype a fully functional low fidelity wireframe containing the core experience in order to get initial feedback from the users.

Projects Homepage

This page shows a bird-eye view of all the projects on the platform

Project Detail Page

This page was bit heavy on stats, the goal was to show useful information to the users without overwhelming them. The data had to be meaningful, scannable, and actionable.

Document Page

Defining the right layout for the document page was a challenge. It is a live multiplayer document editor with auto-save. The most prominent information such as status and doc owners is at the top. The right sidebar is sticky and houses comments and tasks.

User Feedback on Wireframes

The feedback I received helped me identify how users view and track projects and their tasks. I was able to discover a lot of opportunities for design and significant room for improvement.

High Fidelity Designs

After consolidating the feedback, I moved to high fidelity designs. The designs were fully interactive with end to end flows.

Task Manager

I built a complete end-end task manager from scratch. Tasks are associated to Projects and Documents and can be assigned to anyone.

Review Manager

This feature is used to get the documents reviewed by anyone in the team. People can request reviews on their documents. The entire process can be seen in the flow here.

Project Manager

A project can be made up of several tasks and documents. It can have a due date and multiple collaborators.

Document Viewer & Editor

This is the page where users spend most of their time. It went through several iterations since so many features are dependent on it. Tasks and reviews are part of the document. It can have multiple states ranging from Not Started to Done.

More work

The work listed in this case study is a bird's eye view of the entire project that took place over the course of 8 months. More details can be shared on request for anyone interested.