ELMO Survey

Overview

Company
ELMO Software 

Role
Senior UX Designer

Platform
SaaS | Responsive

Date
2019

Product
ELMO Survey

Key Contributions

• Facilitated Design Sprint workshops

• Conducted stakeholder & user interviews

• Performed competitive analysis

• Developed personas & user stories

• Created user journeys & wireframes

• Executed visual design & prototyping

• Led usability testing

The Challenge

After acquiring PeoplePulse, a customer and employee survey software company, in 2017, ELMO's sales team noted a decline in its retention rate by 2019. Customer feedback consistently cited a lack of recent improvements. Given PeoplePulse's decade-old, fragile codebase, the decision was made to update ELMO's newer solution, "Survey," to facilitate customer transition and better address their current needs.

Research & Strategy

I initiated the project with a Google Design Sprint-based discovery workshop. We interviewed subject matter experts from key departments, mapped out the customer transition process, and identified critical initial steps. We prioritized building Recipient Management, PeoplePulse's most popular feature, which included sending survey invitations, managing email templates, and creating predefined demographic filters.

I then conducted extensive customer and former PeoplePulse customer interviews, alongside reviewing exit survey responses. Through thorough sense-making and synthesis, I developed personas and key insights, which I shared with stakeholders.

Our research consistently highlighted three core problems with the existing product:

• Counterintuitive and difficult navigation
• Ambiguous iconography
• Excessive steps required to complete tasks

Design & Prototyping

I designed a prototype specifically to address these challenges, focusing on:

• Simplifying overall navigation
• De-cluttering the user interface
• Significantly reducing the number of steps for core tasks

Validation

The first round of usability tests was a resounding success. User feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with comments like "modern," "easy to use," "that's it?", and even "Apple-like." This validation confirmed the design's effectiveness in meeting user needs and simplifying complex workflows.

The Team

Product Manager Shameeta Diwakar
Business Analyst James Guyyani
Engineering Manager James Gordon
Software Engineer Jonathan Z
Software Engineer Aleks Sotirovski
Software Engineer Sunil Shenoy
Software Engineer Pum
Software Engineer Yifei Yu

Special Thanks

Sales Manager Chris Chilton
Digital Project Manager Emily Thomas
Marketing Consultant Arman Haghi
Program Manager Jeremy Simmons
Digital Project Manager Samantha Cai
Digital Project Manager Theresa Doung
Digital Project Manager Bhumika Trivedi
Digital Project Manager Ranbir Dhillon
Project Manager Support Amy Sun

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