EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION PLATFORM
Role
UX/UI
Year
2024
Industry
INTERNAL PROJECT
Platforms
DESKTOP
Context
The Communications team aimed to evolve an existing employee recognition platform by improving its user flow, usability, and visual clarity to support better user engagement.
Challenges
During the redesign process, the company began implementing a Design System. This project was the first to adopt it, introducing an additional layer of complexity: building and evolving components while simultaneously designing new interfaces. It required working in parallel on the Design System foundation and the product experience, ensuring consistency, scalability, and a high-quality user experience.
Project Goals
Improve the platform's user flow, making navigation more intuitive
Establish initial components and guidelines for the Design System, creating a foundation for future scalability
Enhance the overall experience, encouraging employees to actively use the platform
Research & Discovery Phase
At the beginning of the project, an analysis of the existing interface was conducted to evaluate user flows, interaction patterns, and core functionalities. This process helped identify usability gaps, friction points, and opportunities to improve the overall experience, establishing a clear foundation for the redesign. Following the flow analysis, a CSD Matrix (Certainties, Assumptions, and Doubts) was created to structure initial learnings and align the understanding of the problem. This exercise helped consolidate known facts, surface hypotheses to be validated, and identify key uncertainties, guiding the next steps in research and design decisions.
Building on insights from the CSD matrix and stakeholder alignment, an in-depth benchmarking analysis of similar market products was conducted. The goal was to evaluate interaction patterns, established user flows, and approaches adopted by comparable solutions, identifying features and interactions that could support the project’s objectives, including platforms such as KudoBox, Sendwishonline, and Kudoboard. From these references, best practices, improvement opportunities, and initial experience guidelines were identified, forming a foundation for defining interactions, evolving user flows, and shaping a more intuitive and engaging solution.
Define
A User Task Flow was developed to map, in detail, how each user profile interacts with the platform, defining their goals, paths, and the features accessed at each stage of the journey. This mapping was key to prioritizing core tasks, reducing friction, and ensuring that flows aligned with both user needs and product objectives.
In parallel, a sitemap was created to structure the information architecture and organize the platform’s main navigation paths, ensuring clarity and consistency across the experience. Together, these artifacts helped organize features and interactions more strategically, contributing to a more intuitive experience and serving as a foundation for evolving user flows and guiding design decisions in the following stages.
Develop
With the user flows defined, we moved into the creation of low- and mid-fidelity wireframes to explore layout solutions, structure information hierarchy, and define key interactions across the platform. These wireframes helped translate ideas into tangible solutions, enabling quick iteration and validation with the Communications team, while ensuring alignment with project goals before moving into higher-fidelity stages.
Following wireframe validation, the kudos cards were refined, evolving their visual design and improving how information and interactions were presented, with a focus on clarity, consistency, and engagement. Next, the high-fidelity prototype was developed, consolidating design decisions and establishing a stronger visual foundation for the product. This phase also acted as a bridge between experience design and system thinking. In parallel, we advanced the structuring and evolution of components, contributing to the creation of a scalable, reusable, and consistent foundation aligned with both product needs and Design System guidelines.After implementation, a user feedback session was conducted to evaluate the experience and identify improvement opportunities. The results highlighted significant improvements in navigation clarity, user engagement, and the platform’s playful experience, especially in key moments such as sending and revealing kudos.As for constructive feedback, users highlighted opportunities to improve the experience by adding dates to the cards to provide better context for received kudos, as well as enabling a more seamless way to reciprocate a kudo directly, without requiring users to initiate a new flow.
After implementation, a user feedback session was conducted to evaluate the experience and identify improvement opportunities. The results highlighted significant improvements in navigation clarity, user engagement, and the platform’s playful experience, especially in key moments such as sending and revealing kudos.As for constructive feedback, users highlighted opportunities to improve the experience by adding dates to the cards to provide better context for received kudos, as well as enabling a more seamless way to reciprocate a kudo directly, without requiring users to initiate a new flow.
Key Positive Feedbacks
Navigation became clearer and more intuitive, including empty states (no sent or received kudos)
The showcase and reveal experience was perceived as more engaging, dynamic, and playful
The ability to preview and switch templates in real time enhanced interactivity
Simpler navigation enabled faster task completion
Users reported increased willingness to engage with the platform
As for constructive feedback, users highlighted opportunities to improve the experience by adding dates to the cards to provide better context for received kudos, as well as enabling a more seamless way to reciprocate a kudo directly, without requiring users to initiate a new flow.
Outcomes
The redesign resulted in a more intuitive, engaging, and visually consistent experience, enhancing how users navigate and interact with the platform. Refined user flows and simplified interactions reduced friction across key journeys, enabling faster and more confident task completion. The introduction of more dynamic and playful elements, especially in moments such as the showcase, increased engagement and encouraged more frequent platform usage. User feedback indicated a stronger connection with the experience and a greater willingness to interact with the product. Additionally, the project established a scalable foundation through the initial development of the Design System, improving interface consistency and enabling more efficient collaboration between design and development. Insights gathered also highlighted opportunities for continuous improvement, guiding future iteration cycles and reinforcing a user-centered, product-driven approach.
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