LV.
Partnerbeat is a B2B Startup providing CRM services. This Application is one place to easily manage business relationships. It transforms the way users manage their clients or partners by moving them out of siloed hacked-together tools into one #Space. It also provides Shared sites - which eases the workflow of users working with customers outside of their company. ​I redesigned the Shared site.
My Role
UX Research, UI Design, Prototyping, High-Fidelity Mockups.
Team & Duration
I solely worked with stakeholder Susan Totten for 3 weeks.
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Results
Was tested on users and is now being Developed.
Problem
People who work with customers, partners, or people outside of their company, need an easier way to work together.
Today, people collaborate outside of their company using too many tools, making it hard to know exactly what is happening in the relationship.
Today, people use:
-
Meetings
-
Email
-
Shared documents & resources
-
Slack channels
-
Text
Information gets stuck in these siloed tools making it hard to move relationships and projects with people outside your company forward. There’s no source of truth for what’s happening in the relationship.
Who has this problem (Target users)
Today, the people who work outside their company most are people who manage ongoing external relationships - e.g. large customer relationships. Most often, their titles are Customer Success Managers, Account Managers, Partnerships Managers.
Requirements for solving problem
-
Easy way to record and share key takeaways from meetings so that everyone knows what the next steps are.
-
Easy way to know what key goals and key tasks the relationship is moving towards in the future.
-
Easy way to gain historical context on what has happened in the past and most recently.
-
Easy way to have conversations asynchronously so that you can make decisions without needing to have a meeting.
Our Product- Shared Site.
Sharing Meeting notes to keep records of meetings.
Chat for asynchronous conversations
Goals and tasks to know the future steps of this relationship
Tested with CSM's and PM's
We tested our product on our Users, both Customer success managers, and Partnership managers. We observed that users were having a hard time using the Shared site, painpoints of which are listed below.
Tom, Customer Success Manager
Tom is a Customer success manager working for Acme Corp. He maintains 40 relationships.​
Jim, Partnership Manager
Jim is a Partnership Manager working for the Acer group. Tom is one of his CSM, whom he meets weekly. ​
Painpoints
Painpoints
-
Tom feels the shared site setup is too heavy. It took him almost a day to create the shared site to send it to Jim.
-
Tom felt he need not teach his Customer Jim a new way to maintain their relationship, hence he uses Meeting notes space to note his meeting minutes and sends it across to Jim via email.
-
The onboarding process throws Jim off
-
Jim does not know where to focus as he lands on the Shared site.
-
Jim does not get what he wants quickly.
Goals
-
Tom wants dynamic meeting notes where he can converse with his partner seamlessly.
Goals
-
Jim wants to know which area needs his attention and also wants to get quick information,
Solution
1. Addressing Tom's Painpoint
Today, Tom is opening Acer group Shared spaces on Partnerbeat Application. He is making notes of the important tasks and goals that he discussed with Jim during his meeting. Instead of sharing the shared space, he is copying all the notes to email and sending them to Jim.
Explorations 2/6
Final Design
The team can track the discussion that happened during the meeting and each has the ability to comment or add a new task or goal.
The team can add a new task or new goal which gets updated
Ability to comment
Inline editing, that aids in adding new tasks or goals.
Tom's user journey using dynamic meeting notes
Today, Tom is opening Acer group Shared spaces on Partnerbeat Application. He is making notes of the important tasks and goals that he discussed with Jim during his meeting. Instead of sharing the shared space, he is copying all the notes to email and sending them to Jim.
2. Addressing Jim's Painpoint.
Today, as Jim onboards to shared site, he lands to home page of shared site. UI in the current version is such that, Jim has to poke around to understand the information that Tom is trying to share. So now, we thought of design a landing which provides JIm with quick information on what's happening in the shared site.
Explorations
Final Design
Jim's user journey using the redesigned shared site.
Problem
People who work with customers, partners, or people outside of their company, need an easier way to work together.
Today, people collaborate outside of their company using too many tools, making it hard to know exactly what is happening in the relationship.
Today, people use:
-
Meetings
-
Email
-
Shared documents & resources
-
Slack channels
-
Text
Information gets stuck in these siloed tools making it hard to move relationships and projects with people outside your company forward. There’s no source of truth for what’s happening in the relationship.
Who has this problem (Target users)
Today, the people who work outside their company most are people who manage ongoing external relationships - e.g. large customer relationships. Most often, their titles are Customer Success Managers, Account Managers, Partnerships Managers.
Requirements for solving problem
-
Easy way to record and share key takeaways from meetings so that everyone knows what the next steps are.
-
Easy way to know what key goals and key tasks the relationship is moving towards in the future.
-
Easy way to gain historical context on what has happened in the past and most recently.
-
Easy way to have conversations asynchronously so that you can make decisions without needing to have a meeting.
Our Product- Shared Site.
Sharing Meeting notes to keep records of meetings.
Chat for asynchronous conversations
Goals and tasks to know the future steps of this relationship
Tested with CSM's and PM's
We tested our product on our Users, both Customer success managers, and Partnership managers. We observed that users were having a hard time using the Shared site, painpoints of which are listed below.
Tom, Customer Success Manager
Tom is a Customer success manager working for Acme Corp. He maintains 40 relationships.​
Jim, Partnership Manager
Jim is a Partnership Manager working for the Acer group. Tom is one of his CSM, whom he meets weekly. ​
Painpoints
Painpoints
-
Tom feels the shared site setup is too heavy. It took him almost a day to create the shared site to send it to Jim.
-
Tom felt he need not teach his Customer Jim a new way to maintain their relationship, hence he uses Meeting notes space to note his meeting minutes and sends it across to Jim via email.
-
The onboarding process throws Jim off
-
Jim does not know where to focus as he lands on the Shared site.
-
Jim does not get what he wants quickly.
Goals
-
Tom wants dynamic meeting notes where he can converse with his partner seamlessly.
Goals
-
Jim wants to know which area needs his attention and also wants to get quick information,
Solution
1. Addressing Tom's Painpoint
Today, Tom is opening Acer group Shared spaces on Partnerbeat Application. He is making notes of the important tasks and goals that he discussed with Jim during his meeting. Instead of sharing the shared space, he is copying all the notes to email and sending them to Jim.
Explorations 2/6
Final Design
The team can add a new task or new goal which gets updated
The team can track the discussion that happened during the meeting and each has the ability to comment or add a new task or goal.
Ability to comment
Inline editing, that aids in adding new tasks or goals.
Tom's user journey using dynamic meeting notes
Today, Tom is opening Acer group Shared spaces on Partnerbeat Application. He is making notes of the important tasks and goals that he discussed with Jim during his meeting. Instead of sharing the shared space, he is copying all the notes to email and sending them to Jim.
2. Addressing Jim's Painpoint.
Today, as Jim onboards to shared site, he lands to home page of shared site. UI in the current version is such that, Jim has to poke around to understand the information that Tom is trying to share. So now, we thought of design a landing which provides JIm with quick information on what's happening in the shared site.
Explorations
Final Design
Jim's user journey using the redesigned shared site.
Problem
People who work with customers, partners, or people outside of their company, need an easier way to work together. Today, people collaborate outside of their company using too many tools, making it hard to know exactly what is happening in the relationship.
Today, people use:
-
Meetings
-
Email
-
Shared documents & resources
-
Slack channels
-
Text
Information gets stuck in these siloed tools making it hard to move relationships and projects with people outside your company forward. There’s no source of truth for what’s happening in the relationship.
Who has this problem (Target users)
Today, the people who work outside their company most are people who manage ongoing external relationships - e.g. large customer relationships. Most often, their titles are Customer Success Managers, Account Managers, Partnerships Managers.
Requirements for solving problem
-
Easy way to record and share key takeaways from meetings so that everyone knows what the next steps are.
-
Easy way to know what key goals and key tasks the relationship is moving towards in the future.
-
Easy way to gain historical context on what has happened in the past and most recently.
-
Easy way to have conversations asynchronously so that you can make decisions without needing to have a meeting.
Our Product- Shared Site.
Sharing Meeting notes to keep records of meetings.
Chat for asynchronous conversations
Goals and tasks to know the future steps of this relationship
Having shared agenda for upcoming meetings, notes from previous meeting notes, and the ability to comment on them is the primary use case for our users( like Customer Success managers, who work with customers outside of their company) but this functionality is missing in Partnerbeats shared site, thus they are leaving the shared site to complete their workflow. We are losing users. The two major problems we saw with the existing version of the shared site are?
1.How do we increase the engagement of the users using the shared site?
2. How do we provide them with focus areas on the shared site?
Research
An extensive study of competitors like Hugo, Asana, monday.com showed me that Partnerbeat's shared site application was behind few aspects. Through our user interviews, it became evident that they were few pain points that need immediate attention.
Persona
Tom, Customer Success Manager
Tom is a Customer success manager working for Acme Corp. He maintains 40 relationships.​
Jim, Partnership Manager
Jim is a Partnership Manager working for the Acer group. Tom is one of his CSM, whom he meets weekly. ​
Painpoints
Painpoints
-
Tom feels the shared site setup is too heavy. It took him almost a day to create the shared site to send it to Jim.
-
Tom felt he need not teach his Customer Jim a new way to maintain their relationship, hence he uses Meeting notes space to note his meeting minutes and sends it across to Jim via email.
-
The onboarding process throws Jim off.
-
Jim does not know where to focus as he lands on the Shared site.
-
Jim does not get what he wants quickly.
Goal
-
Tom wants dynamic meeting notes where he can converse with his partner seamlessly.
Goal
-
Jim wants to know which area needs his attention and also wants to get quick information.
Solution
1. Addressing Tom's Painpoint - He is unable to converse with Jim seamlessly at the meeting notes level, hence prefers sending Jim an email instead of the Shared site link.
Today, Tom is opening Acer group Shared spaces on Partnerbeat Application. He is making notes of the important tasks and goals that he discussed with Jim during his meeting. Instead of sharing the shared space, he is copying all the notes to email and sending them to Jim.
Explorations 2/6
Initially I explored many different ways Jim could create meeting notes, comment on them, from sidebar, toolbar, header comment input and file preview. I also explored different meeting notes. I detailed out every single flow weighed its pros and cons.
Sidebar having list of previous meetings and upcoming meeting is confusing.
Tasks and goals mentioned in meeting notes can be placed in a better way.
Sidebar having list of previous meetings and upcoming meeting is confusing.
Tasks and goals mentioned in meeting notes can be placed in a better way.
Final Design
Ability to comment on meeting notes.
​
_gif.gif)
List of meetings on the sidebar and drop-down to view past meeting further.
_gif.gif)
User Journey
Tom's user journey using dynamic meeting notes
Revised meeting notes has the ability for Jim to comment on meeting notes from his partner Tom thus increasing their engagement on the shared site.
Tom send Jim shared site with updated meeting notes from their previous meeting
Jim comments on the meeting note to update Tom on another task.
Dynamic messaging and inline editing.
Click on the task from meeting notes lands to the task edit page.
2. Addressing Jim's Painpoint- As he onboards the shared site, he is clueless, where to focus?
Today, as Jim onboards to the shared site, he lands on the home page of the shared site. UI in the current version is such that, Jim has to poke around to understand the information that Tom is trying to share. So now, we thought of design a landing page which provides Jim with quick information on what's happening on the shared site.
Explorations 3/7
We are providing quick information to Jim that Tom has sent him meeting notes and tasks and goals that are due.
Final Design
Jim had a weekly meeting with Tom.
After his meeting on
Apr 28, Tom shares meeting notes with Jim through the shared site.
The line in red color indicates Jim is viewing the shared site on this day.
Quick access to all the features.
User Journey
Jim's user journey using the redesigned shared site.
Jim lands on the home page, where he is provided with important information that needs his attention.
Jim views his previous meeting notes and clicks on tasks.
Jim lands on the task edit page.
Jim can directly message Tom on chat thread
Jim comments on the tasks section.
Clickable Prototype of Shared site
Results
Redesigned shared site was tested on users. Comments from one of the users has been attached. Now, the redesign is being developed.
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How to adapt to changing requirements
New timelines, resourcing issues, and reprioritization meant the scope of the project was constantly changing. I had to adapt to those changes and still deliver the best design in time with tight deadlines.
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Always fight for good UX
I had to work under very strict technical constraints, but still, fight for what I believe is essential to having a good user experience.
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Don’t overpromise and underdeliver
I learned how to define a true MVP vs. something that is simply not usable and therefore not shippable.
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Choosing what we won’t do
There were many great use cases we could tackle with a rich feature set. However, every single one was costly or unrealistic. I had to determine where the real value was for Box so we did not spread ourselves too thin.
Learnings
Words from Stakeholder
Susan Totten.
​
Ex Uber, Ex Blend Product Manager.
Stakeholder, Product Designer of Partnerbeat.
"Likhitha has more thoughtfulness, empathy, and focus than designers with many years of experience. She asks deep questions to get to the bottom of whatever user pain point we're trying to solve. One of my favorite things about Likhitha is that she is an entrepreneur which comes through in her work - she understands what it's like to create a business, the need to create true value for people, plus she has a lot of grit and gets things done! She isn't afraid to tackle big, hairy projects and massive user workflows with very little context.
As a startup, our design needs span a lot of ground, and Likhitha takes it on with excitement. Most importantly, she is a pleasure to work with! As a startup, work is chaos, but it makes all the difference having people like Likhitha who are in the trenches with you who stay positive, collaborate seamlessly, and keep trudging through!"