Seren
Role: UX and UI Designer
Team: Samantha Khou, Nate Healy, Kai Kang
Responsibilities: User Interviews, Usability Testing, Prototyping, and Visual Design
Tools Used: Figma, Adobe Photoshop
Duration: 40 Hours
Seren’s landing page: It is a delightful and fun brand
Problem: As workplace environments have evolved, more employees are finding themselves in remote and hybrid roles. This change has made it more difficult to create and preserve relationships at work, especially for employees across teams.
Solution: Seren aims to solve this problem by connecting remote co-workers with instant and tailored watercooler calls based on shared interests.
The Kick Off Meeting
As a team, we met with Seren’s leadership and received background on the product, it’s current form, and where we could help as a UX team. Communication would be key, but also a challenge as our team and Seren’s were spread across ten time zones. From this meeting we created a flexible project plan that covered two main tasks:
A better understanding of users.
A review of the current onboarding experience.
Understanding the user
One of Seren’s main goals with this project was to gain a better understanding of their users and what would motivate them to accept and engage in a Seren call.
The target user group that we focused on was Gen Z software engineers, working in remote or hybrid roles. We conducted user interviews with 2 different groups of participants.
Group 1: What would motivate a remote worker to accept a virtual watercooler call?
9 out of 9 participants shared that they would want to know the conversation topic before accepting a Seren call
9 out of 9 participants would prefer for watercooler calls to be with a group of 2 or 3
8 out of 9 participants wanted to know who they would be talking to
8 out of 9 participants are open to push notifications from Seren
Using these 4 insights, a push notification could be designed and tested to invite participants to a call.
Group 2: How are Gen Z software engineers handling remote work?
5 out of 5 participants find it more difficult to build and maintain relationships while working remotely
5 out of 5 participants have recurring social activities at work (e.g. virtual games, Zoom happy hours, etc.)
4 out of 5 participants enjoy working remotely because it eliminates the daily commute and allows them to focus more on their personal lives
The client asked for this specific group and wanted general empathy-based questions. The answers were quite varied, but we saw overlap in the above 3. The results help to justify the need for Seren, but don’t necessarily help us improve it.
Onboarding Review & Design
Seren’s other main goal was to improve the onboarding experience so it’s intuitive and easy to use.
First, we performed a design audit to find areas of improvement based on UX best practices. It was very helpful to see the current product and try to find low hanging fruit, such as the clarity of calls to action.
Second, we planned and conducted usability tests looking for users’ pain points in the onboarding process. These interviews backed up what we learned in the design audit and helped us prioritize the issues.
Third, we listed the found issues and our recommendations. This helped us communicate our findings with the client and explained what mockups would be created.
We split the mockups into three parts.
My three screens included:
Clarifying the explanation for linking the user’s Google calendar.
Onboarding modals and buttons with Seren specific branding (the programmers were not sure this was possible, but would look into it).
Steps defined so the user knows where they are in the process.
Clarification in calls to action and the copy that precedes the CTAs.
An all-in-one scrolling modal window containing the entire process.
Here is a simple prototype of the scrolling, all-in-one, solution for onboarding. Seren’s founder wanted to see what this idea would look like, so I gave it a shot.
As an artist, I’m happy with the design. It keeps the process focused and intentional. It also reinforces the branding and feels like a unified product. As a UX designer, I’m skeptical. In the future, I would need to check with a developer to determine its feasibility and then put it through usability and AB testing to see if it actually helps.
Conclusion
The need for remote and hybrid workers to communicate with more than just close teammates is clear, especially at large companies. The people at Seren know this and are working hard to improve this new reality. I was happy to work on a worthwhile endeavor.
It was interesting to see UX heuristics proven during the audit and interviews. Their importance was reinforced for me as I saw people’s progress frustrated. I hope the changes can be implemented so that user’s first impressions of Seren will be positive and painless.
This was my first UX team project. I was fortunate to have enthusiastic, helpful and capable teammates who were excellent at communication and thoughtful of each other’s time (we were spread across the U.S. from PST-EST). Kai and Sam made even 6-hour Zoom calls bearable. Great work team and good luck in your careers!
