Platform Redesign - SAMETRICA
Redesigned the platform, revamped its interface and user flows, and enhanced the overall user experience for SAMETRICA.
Timeline
-
3 Months
My Role
-
UX Research
-
UX/UI Designer
Tool
Client
-
SAMETRICA
-
Figma
-
Jira
-
Trello
What is ESG?
ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance — a set of standards to measure a corporation’s behaviour in those three aspects if the companies are environmentally and socially conscious. From that, stakeholders and investors can assess company values and potential investments.
Environmental
Social
Governance
Understand the Product
SAMETRICA is a SaaS company offering an Impact and ESG Reporting Platform that empowers users to map, measure, and enhance their positive impact on people and the planet. As demand for ESG and impact reporting rises among corporations, SAMETRICA aims to enhance its product and user experience to maintain competitiveness in the evolving ESG landscape.
To gain a comprehensive understanding, we explored the product’s four core product features:
Impact Measurement Wizard
Leverages AI to recommend relevant impact metric indicators and corresponding question sets, enabling companies to tailor their custom surveys for effective data collection.
Complex Data Collector
The data warehouse where automates data collection and converts it into actionable, quantifiable insights.
Logic Model Builder
Empower users to define impact calculations through custom formulas, aligning metrics with their specific reporting goals. This is how the collected data is transformed into actionable insights.
Data Dashboard
Provides real-time data visualization to showcase ESG impact on business performance, enabling stakeholders to present and narrate their business results effectively.
We started with several knowledge transfer sessions with the team, asking numerous questions to understand how the platform operates. Given the customer experience team's extensive resources to support clients, we gathered substantial user feedback from their insights.
"Clients prefer to learn about the ESG framework before they dive into the whole process....."
" To be able to select all the indicators and questions set normally takes a week with this back and forth process with the customer experience team...."
" Clients find the AI's method for selecting indicators incredibly impressive..."
The Current Problem
-12%
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Low net promoter score was recorded from survey asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend using the SAMTERICA platform to others .
45%
Customer Churn Rate
Clients have lost confidence in renewing their contracts with SAMETRICA due to negative experiences with the product.
99%
Rely on Customer Support
99% of the issues rely on 1-on-1 customer support when clients encounter platform-related problems.
How Might We?
How might we improve SAMETRICA users' product satisfaction and minimize the need for costly customer experience team support?
Research - Competitor Analysis
We started initiating research on our direct competitors to understand the ESG market. We conducted research on five direct competitors on their SWOT analysis, comparing to the SAMETRICA platform. With comprehensive research, we learned the weakness and strength of the current platform. As well we also discovered learning aspects that we can learn from our competitors, such as more helpful guidance such as a detailed help center and an onboarding tour guide when the user first on-board the platform. There were a lot of UX improvement we can implement on the current platform. Not to mention the out-dated interface design on the platform.
Analysis Findings Highlights
-
😥 Technical Complexity and User Experience: While SAMETRICA excels in back-end data analysis, it has a steep learning curve due to a complex and unintuitive user interface. Simplifying the platform and its language could enhance the user experience and offer more intuitive designs.
-
😵💫 Comprehensive Centralized Dashboard: Unlike competitors' streamlined all-in-one homepages, SAMETRICA segregates tasks across different platforms, requiring multiple logins and navigation, which can hinder efficiency.
-
🤕 Lack of Help Resources: SAMETRICA lacks sufficient guiding information and learning materials for newcomers, unlike competitors who provide extensive resources for sustainability education.
-
🫣 AI Technology: Although SAMETRICA uses AI in its Impact Measurement Wizard (IMW) process, it misses the opportunity to effectively promote this feature on its website.
Current User Journey
A user journey map helps identify opportunities for improvement. We created one to illustrate a typical user journey using the SAMETRICA platform, highlighting several areas for improvement that the design team should prioritize.
-
Lack of Self-Guided Onboarding Experience: The onboarding process heavily relies on the Customer Experience team, often requiring multiple meetings to complete, which increases operational costs.
-
Lack of Intuitive Platform Experience: Setting up the Impact Measurement Wizard can take up to two weeks. The iterative process of selecting indicators and questions makes completing the setup inconvenient.
-
Lack of User Guidance: The platform lacks sufficient guidance and help resources, leading to a heavy reliance on the Customer Experience team.
-
Complex and Technical Terminology: The use of technical and complex terminology makes it difficult for users to understand product features.
-
Outdated User Interface: The outdated interface diminishes users' interest in using the product.
For phase one of the redesign project, we are addressing the initial user experience, focusing on the onboarding section and the Impact Measurement Wizard (IMW). This is the first step for clients to set up their impact reports and allows the AI features to attract greater client buy-in.
On-boarding User Gating Flow
First, we identified different user roles and permissions to create a tailored onboarding experience. A gating flow was designed to clarify the relationship between the parent organization (which signed the contract with SAMETRICA) and its subsidiary companies, which report metrics to the parent organization.
Impact Measurement Wizard - User Flow
After refining the onboarding experience, we shifted our focus to the Impact Measurement Wizard. We designed a new user flow to simplify and streamline the back-and-forth process of selecting impact indicators.
As shown in the comparison below, the updated user flow enables users to complete tasks more efficiently by reducing the number of screens and steps. Additionally, we incorporated new features based on client feedback to further enhance the overall product experience.
Utilizing Material UI
Next, based on our new user flow, we began prototyping. Given project budget and timeline constraints, as well as business needs, we used Material UI to accelerate the design process.
The Solution - Design Improvements
Within three months, we had consistent workshops, user tests to make substantial progress on design iterations and improvements on the product, these includes:
-
Added a new onboarding sign-up flow to create product-led user experiences;
-
Defined client user permissions and roles on the platform, creating specific user flows based on these roles;
-
Introduced “Workspace" functionality to allow parent organizations, such as asset managers, to assign impact measurement metrics to subsidiary companies (e.g., portfolio companies managed by the asset manager);
-
Improved the overall user experience across core features;
-
Initiated the rebranding of SMATERICA;
Added New Onboarding Flow
Before:
-
Limited onboarding experience required heavy reliance on the customer experience team for product education.
-
No self-guided onboarding existed, making it challenging for users to independently learn Impact Measure Wizard (IMW) features.
After:
-
Developed a self-onboarding process that encourages independent learning, fostering a smoother user transition to the product.
-
Improved user experience with clearer instructions and guidance throughout onboarding;
-
Incorporated workspace setup and user permission options in the onboarding process to capture detailed data from leadership, improving product engagement and retention;
The Impact Measurement Wizard
Before:
-
Users select impact indicators and question sets across two separate screens.
-
Navigating back and forth to review multiple indicators creates a cumbersome process.
-
Linear workflows limit flexibility for multi-step tasks, such as adding custom questions or modifying indicator selections.
After:
-
Enhanced the overall selection experience by creating the left and right navigation user behaviour within one screen. Enabling users to visualize both indicator and question set selections simultaneously, enhancing clarity.
-
Added a dropdown menu to filter and view specific indicators easily.
-
Incorporated "Add Custom Question" and "Share & Collaborate" feature into the main Impact Measurement Wizard (IMW) screen for streamlined, accessible navigation across tasks.
Provide better guided information
Before:
-
The question mark icon and information icon is confu,sing sitting right next to each other;
-
Help guides are extremely long provide too much information leading to content overload;
After:
-
Remove one icon and only keep one information icon to allow the user to view example answers when answering the questionnaires;
-
Keeping the guidance short and straightforward to enable user to digest information;
Promote the AI feature
Before:
-
Although the software uses AI to help select relevant indicators, the website or platform lacks clear information about this feature.
After:
-
Created onboarding content to educate users on how AI is utilized to improve their experience.
-
Added AI icons to visually indicate where artificial intelligence plays a role within the platform.
User Testing
After building the prototype, we did a few rounds of user testing with our clients to test out any usability issues and possible improvements. Sythesizing all the user feedback, we then put them onto a priotization metrix to priotize any high value and low effort improvments and move the rest into development backlogs.
RBC
Alterna Savings
InvestEco
The Prototype
Have we solved the problem?
Definitely! Redesigning the primary user task flow for selecting ESG indicators has significantly reduced setup time and enhanced the user experience by improving visibility and combining two screens into one. Additionally, we created a product-led experience by implementing a new onboarding process and guided tours, reducing the need for Customer Experience team involvement and allowing them to focus on other product strategies.
With the new iteration
Business Success Metric
50%
Reduced Impact Measurement Wizard set up time by 50%
25%
Reduced churn rate to 25%
40%
Reduced customer experience team's support by 40%
Next Step
-
Repeat the process for other main product features, including the Logic Model Builder, Complex Data Collector, and Report Dashboard;
-
Develop and conduct user testing, applying the process to additional product features;
-
Rebrand the product;
-
Redesign the user interface.
Thank you for reading my work!
Want to collaborate? Or to say hello. Please don't hesitate to reach out.
