TALNT
Alerts Feature

Product Design

Introduction

TALNT is an executive search platform which tracks executive level job moves, providing business insights, information and analytic data to its users. Following our redesign of the platform, we delivered the MVP version of TALNT and the focus has been on progressing to MMP. Introducing The alerts feature was the first step in working towards making our product loveable.

MY ROLE

Research, analysis, product design, design systems, user-testing.

THE TEAM

2 designers, 1 product manager, 5+ engineers.

TIMELINE

Mar 2024 - Jul 2024

Users grew over 10x in the last year, moving TALNT into a position where the company began generating revenue and rapidly changing to suit the needs and demands of its users and stakeholders

Overview of the Alerts Feature

Creating an alert

Search Functionality

Delete Alert

Alerts Settings

Discover - Problem statement

Users are frustrated with the high volume of data they receive from TALNT alerts, as they lack the ability to customise their news feeds to match their specific interests. This lack of personalisation results in users being bombarded with irrelevant notifications, causing them to feel overwhelmed and potentially miss important moves. To enhance user experience, TALNT alerts needs to offer more customisation options, allowing users to tailor notifications to their preferences and reduce information overload.

Discover - Solution

Deliver a feature which allows users to easily personalise their moves alerts allowing them to receive customised moves data, which will give our users relevant data to their moves feed and email notifications.

Feature must be relevant to user goals

This is a new feature so we must work with users to see if this is relevant.

Users want to see customised data

We need to provide users with relevant data so that TALNT is personalised to their needs.

Define - Competitive Analysis

Competitor analysis showed that similar companies offer filter options for product personalisation

TALNT has several competitors which I researched, however these are the 3 competitors which I felt had the best product personalisation, due to the ease of use and accessibility .

Define - User Interviews

I Initially had conversations with users, product managers and other stakeholders which led to discussions about introducing this feature, but I wanted to have more discussions and formal interviews to understand how I could further cater the product for the users needs.

My interviewees were more likely to use TALNT if custom alerts were introduced

"What motivated you to begin using the platform?"

"What is the process you take when attempting to achieve your goals?"

"What is the most difficult aspect of trying to achieve your goals and why?"

"What can we do to aid in your day to day work flow?"

Define - Insights

Whilst processing and analysing the feedback I received from the users, I discovered 2 major insights into the motivations and expectations of TALNT users.

Motivations

The main motivation was for users to see relevant data to complete their individual tasks quickly.

THE TEAM

the tasks are time consuming due to the amount of data needed to complete a task, e.g a long list.

TIMELINE

Users want to a product which improves efficiency allowing them to finish their tasks quickly, especially as the tasks typically have tight deadlines.

Expectations

Users expect to easily find moves data for their industry or sector.

THE TEAM

Allow for people moves data filtering. To personalise the platform to their requirements.

TIMELINE

Users also expect to receive relevant moves to their emails, as some users only use emails alerts to receive their data.

Define - User Personas

TALNT is used by different personas with various motivations when using the platform.

Our users include business owners, consultants,  researchers, analysts and recruiters. However since TALNT is used widely across the consultant industry is is crucial we provide a service that matches all these users needs.

Define - Experience review

We started the process with a product experience review of our current TALNT product

Key Takeaways

Very high drop-off rates indicated poor onboarding and an underwhelming product experience

a large number of workflows and experiences in the TALNT product scored very low as per our benchmarking

We have a large number of user cases which presents a number of problems when meeting user requirements

A imperative was put in place to improve the usability of the new features and an improvement on the sites accessibility

Design Goals

The experience review also helped us define our focus areas for the feature design.

Flexible

The alerts feature needs to be adaptable to different screen sizes and devices

Simple to use

The design has to be clean, and help users easily complete their tasks.

Coherent

The design for the alerts field has to be consistent with the rest of the site.

Define - Jobs to be done

Identifying and prioritising user jobs

Our users include business owners, consultants,  researchers, analysts and recruiters. However since TALNT is used widely across the consultant industry is is crucial we provide a service that matches all these users needs.

Define - Bucketing

Bucketing user jobs into the stages of the user journey

User jobs from the Jobs-To-Done exercises helped me see patterns and map out the user journey into five broad buckets. For the MVP.


Develop - Sketches

Initial Sketches

Based on the research and our product goals I sketched some design concepts

Develop - Wireframes

Initial Ideas

After the sketches were reviewed and discussed I created high fidelity wireframes with a potential user journey

Deliver - Design Iterations

Iteration 1

Removed search as the tech lead felt it wasn’t necessary as users could use suggestions to build alert

Name the Alert in the same pop up to reduce user workload

Include preselected alerts based on the move

Alert suggestions included based on data in job move

Iteration 2

The next iteration included suggestions in results box to indicate to the user where the results would appear.

I suggested labelling the results and name input fields and adding a search, but an issue management bought up was developer resources and the potential complexities of adding a search.

I decided to design the feature without a search as I felt I needed user feedback to justify the reasons for adding it.

Final Outcome

Based on user feedback and standard design principles we decided to add a search to the Alerts pop up, I felt this was beneficial as users could customise the alert based on their specific requirements and the component could be reusable.

Another change was increasing the width of the container so more alerts could appear in the results field and including remove tool tips when hovering over an alert.

I was happy with the alerts feature and felt we achieved the design goals we set out when in the research stage. Due to limited resources and time I compromised on certain decisions, for example I wanted the search field above the results as this approach had better visual hierarchy thus making it easier for users in their journey when creating an alert.

Deliver - Final Prototype

Final Outcome: Highlights

The alerts modal was iterated several times until users and stakeholders were happy.

Impact

User time retention increased over the last few months, It helped users reach their goals and receive relevant data from TALNT, furthermore based on feedback users are managing to complete their tasks more efficiently.

Key Takeaways

Working to deliver the alerts feature taught me the importance of designing each element intentionally and the level of detail and iteration thats required to simplify a user journey to improve the users experience. Furthermore, I learnt to use UX standards, research and user feedback to justify design decisions when working with stakeholders.

Currently in London