How This Sr Product Manager Transformed a Clunky UI into a User-Centric Experience

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, OK, um, the one that's taking the longest time is actually my current product, and, uh, so how, let me give you a little bit of my, my background in terms of, so as a developer, I've worked on GUIs, uh, so there's a little bit of a design background, and then, uh, moving on to, uh, the next company, I had access to, uh, UI UXT. So basically, I could sit with them and uh you know, understand exactly what the latest trends in design are or, you know, how to go about uh designing for a particular user. So, then, uh, last year, I made a move to become the first product manager in the current organization that I have and this is a team of one, right? There's no design team, there's no product team, there's no analyst team, there's no marketing team, there's no. So this is just one thing, and uh the existing platform was developed by engineers. And one of the biggest challenges was this was not uh user-friendly at all. So the challenge that I had is I would say the biggest challenge was stakeholder management because nobody wants to hear a product manager come in on the first day and say you're doing things wrong, right? Uh, that's the biggest challenge because, everybody said, you know, they've invested time and effort into this, and you come in and say, you know what, this works great, or, you know what, there's a very small thing that you can make a change to, and the challenge that I came in here was the UI was great, but the UX was all wrong, right?

OK, right, so if I had to give you an example. Uh, say something like, uh, your profile settings. Uh, Typically what happens is, uh, in any software that you design, your profile settings is in one page, right? So for one user, you've got everything in one page or easily linkable from one particular section. Here, uh, all the different parts, uh, you know, a particular user was broken up into 3 different parts and the navigation was bad. Uh, the, uh, uh, what do you call it, uh, browser and, uh, the cookies was bad. Everything was all over the place. And the hard thing was trying to convince him that user experience is different from UI and uh we didn't have a great user experience. So uh there was a lot of friction at that point. There was a lot of uh pushback around that, you know, every time I heard, you know, I tried to say, OK, this will not work, at least in the modern software, but the common thing that I heard was But the UI looks great and a smart user is gonna figure this out, right? And in my experience, there is no such thing as a smart user. You design for a user, there's no such thing as a smart or a dumb user, but I've never come across a dumb user, right? If you are designing for a smart user, you don't have a product. So, I mean, that's a personal thing. Now, what happened was, uh, when I came in, I had to learn the domain. I moved from, uh, a financial domain, uh, right into something called HRMS. So I had to learn the domain and so now you had a product which the developer said they've designed it perfectly. They've designed it, keeping in mind a certain set of users. So I had to make one the assumption that, OK, the user study is right. I will focus on the, uh, what do you call it, the platform or the domain knowledge. And so I talked to the users, uh, like I said, there was no main sales guy, there's no customer support, nothing. Um, what I had to do, and there was no users at, at all. You had a lot of signups in the beginning, but there's nobody using our platform. So one of my key roles is basically calling up these people and you know, figuring out what are they looking for and why are they not using our platform. So talking to these guys, it was very apparent that you know they couldn't understand our platform at all. So we have no documentation uh they couldn't figure out our platform at all and one of the key things that we were talking was great user experience is it something that somebody who had no, uh, background in the, uh, domain could actually get up to speed very quickly, but that was not happening so. How, uh, in terms of, uh, one of my, uh, challenges was in designing new features. I had to wire frame new screens. Now, I couldn't wire frame new screens, keeping in mind a great user experience because I had to keep in mind the existing user experience that's there. But how do I transition from this current experience to the new experience? So in between what happened was one of the investors came in with a great idea to uh redesign our web page, complete UI appeal, you know, I wanted to modernize the entire thing. Uh, what I did was I went slightly behind the stakeholders. I basically told these guys, uh, you know, can we get them to redesign, uh, the interface in the web app also, basically I said because we wanted both of them to jump together. So I told them, uh, do that. And then I called up the UX guys and I said, you know what, here are 3 to 4 different users. I'm gonna give you these guys. Call them first. Don't design anything. Call them first. Do a user research. Let's start from scratch. Do a user research. They did a user research and then they did some wire frames. Then I said, you know what, don't design anything else. Let's do a user acceptance test. We did a user acceptance test. Only after that, these guys, you know, finalized their wire frames and all of that. So the challenge here has been, OK, now I come in, it's between stakeholder management. So when the other guys came in and, you know, they came up with the wire frames with the entire picture, the entire design, the stakeholders are like, this works, right? This is great. And that's fine. So now the challenge is how to implement this. So the stakeholders had, uh, you know, we'll design this or we'll implement this with a totally different software module. We were in Angler. We'll do this in React and all of that. Uh, so then there were budget constraints and, you know, developer, hiring developers to build this entire system. So that's been an ongoing challenge. It's been more than at least 7 to 8 months now, and the current COVID situation is not helping with that, but. At least, uh, my biggest achievement here has been, uh, you know, looking at the user acceptance test. So I remember, uh, we had this stakeholder with, he was used to our older platform. He looked at the new designs. It was just wire frames, not even a prototype. He looked at and said this looks so much more better, you know, I can use this. They continuously kept trying to click these buttons in the wire, uh, wireframes, and they thought there's an actual product or a prototype and like, you know, I can use this. So that is, uh, that was a big foundation for me.

So, uh, the main goal was, uh, the existing system did not work, right? Um,

define that.

Yeah, OK, so then, uh, multiple challenges. OK, uh, let's, uh, let me give you a brief about the product itself, right? So the product was existing in a Red Ocean market. This was not an innovative product. This was not, uh, you know, a market where there's only one or two competitors. This was within my state itself. There were probably around 100, uh, players in the market space, uh, all with their own different products. You could do this product, OK. It's a payroll product, so you could do this on, uh, payroll itself. Now, uh, on, sorry, on my Microsoft Excel. So when I come out with a product and one of the key things that, uh, people complain, so I know that there is a demand because we run campaigns and people are coming up to us and saying, you know what, I need a payroll product, but, uh, you know, the existing products are not working. So we're talking about Red Ocean Market which is completely populated, uh, you know, overcrowded. People are still saying, you know, there's no product that is meeting my needs. So there is definitely um a requirement there in terms of unmet needs and my current product was not meeting that right so people are not uh understanding how to use the product uh we were going with an MVP approach uh which is not uh right because, you know, the existing products that had customers. They were like at least 6, they were 6 years ahead of us, right, so I, I had to make something that is not an MVP. It had to meet, uh, the minimum, uh, uh, feature set that your existing products had so in. Keeping all of this in line that I had an unusable product and the feature set was less. I had to make sure that, OK, then how do I prioritize this? I could do two things. I could build features onto the existing products, so let's say the back end could uh take care of all the functionality part while I try to convince the stakeholders on redesigning uh the front deck, uh, the usability. So let's say the existing product would have the feature set. It would, it might not be usable, but the new product that would be, let's say somewhere, uh, the old product would phase into the new product or the new design, and then the usability would go up. So by that time, I was hoping that, you know, I could get at least 10 to 15 customers who are saying, OK, fine, you know, the product features that meets my requirements, so I know that the uh the Features at least meet uh all the customer's uh requirements, but I could later, let's say iteratively work on the usability part because that is always an ongoing process.

OK. Did

yeah. So, OK, that's right, I think I should have explained myself a little bit better. So, um, I had joined, uh, early February of last year, and what had happened was before I joined, uh, the company, basically, I mean, they were in development for a few years, and, uh, a couple of months just before I joined, they ran an experiment with a third-party company and from there, they got 1000 signups, right, just for this particular service. So, Uh, the company had, uh, basically pivoted a couple of times, so they were in HRMS, and, uh, they have pivoted from, you know, making a full-fledged HRMS system to focusing just on payroll and, uh, you know, multiple iterations like that. So by the time I joined, uh, the core message was, is, OK, we're gonna focus only on payroll. And uh we will add on a few financial services on top of this. Um, and that's where I came in because I had a financial, uh, I had a background in a financial technology company. So they have the data that, OK, there are 1000 signups, but there's no usage, right? So this is the data that I have when I joined the company. And when I first opened up the app, what you're right, uh, so the colors look good, and, you know, there was a sidebar with a decent gradient and all of that, but there is no onboarding. There is no tool tips, nothing of the sort. It basically, once you sign up, you will land on the home screen with 2 buttons, just 2 buttons. It's action A, Action B, OK. And again, that's why I said the user behavior in terms of, of when I talk to the developer, they're like a smart user is gonna figure this out. Right? And my background says there's no such thing as that. There is no such thing as a smart user who's gonna figure this out. This is not Google. This is not email, nothing. Even, uh, let's say if it is Gmail, there is, uh, there are some tool tips, you know, somebody tells you, OK, these are the first few actions that you can take. We didn't have any of that. Right, so, uh, that's the data that I had. And calling, calling up people told me that absolutely, you know, people needed the payroll service, but they couldn't figure out how to use the app. How do I enter these details? Or even, uh, with the MVP approach, what happened was it typically what happens is, um, people tend a mistake or a common misconception about the MVP is it's OK to release a buggy product and You know, well, then once users come in and they start complaining, you know, users basically do the all your, uh, testing and all of that, and then we slowly fix everything, so we had a lot of those problems. So, and, and, uh, you know, my approach is basically I don't want to lease anything to customers when they have to discover bugs. But, uh, some of the stakeholders, so basically, uh, when we're talking about I have a, I'm a product manager and then I have to, uh, I have a CEO and a CTO. So basically, as a product manager, it's basically I can try to convince people, but ultimately that decision making happens onto them. So I try to give them as much info as possible in terms of, you know, this is not working or, OK, let's design this. So what I said was, OK, fine, you know, people are Not using it. They want extra one or two features. So I designed those features and then, let's uh, release this. So it was, uh, it's been a journey, so for the past 7 to 8 months.