Salesforce Recruiting and Admissions
Challenge Fully redesign existing Salesforce Recruiting and Admissions products for students, university offices and recommenders. Improve user experience and deliver more customization abilities for the end user. Rebuild legacy products on standard Salesforce system, using opportunity to improve user flows for ease-of-use.
Solution Worked closely with Product Management, Engineering, Architecture, Sales and Partners to gather requirements, insights and feedback. Used research insights and cross functional input to create multiple explorations, options, concepts and final design for release. Validated with internal and external participants along the way. Provided feedback and design direction to designers to keep Recruiting, Admissions and Student Support product experiences consistent and aligned with long term strategy.
Role Design Lead (for 3 designers - Recruiting, Dashboard, Student Support) and Designer (Admissions).
Outcome Products released March 2023. Achieved up to 66% improvement in user efficiency. Received executive and customer recognition for significant usability and efficiency improvements, especially in the application processing phase.
Background
Salesforce Education Cloud consists of several products built using “managed packages” i.e. custom code built separate from the Salesforce core system of components and modules. Since the products were not leveraging the Salesforce architecture, they offered customers with limited ability to customize the products for their needs. Customers were providing negative feedback around this and were also running into some significant usability issues. The goals of the project were:
First Release : Redesign Admissions and Recruiting products end to end on the Salesforce architecture and also use this opportunity to deliver key user experience improvements
Second Release : Redesign the other products within Education Cloud umbrella to achieve similar goals
Deliver a unified end to end experience across all these products that was consistent, seamless and easy to use
I redesigned the Admissions product and led the designers working on the redesign efforts of the other products. The Admissions product spanned several several personas (students, university admissions office, recommenders) and multiple journey phases (student application, university application processing, recommendations experience, university application review, and decision). I worked with various Salesforce component and objects, Lightning Design System, Omni and Orchestrator.
Research Insights
Before I came on board, a researcher had conducted some interviews with folks that work for University Admissions offices. I went through all the interviews and the research report to glean any research insights I could get. I talked to various cross functional team members and Salesforce Solutions team (they work closely with university admissions staff). I also studied the existing product in detail.
Facilitated workshops
As I redesigned the Admissions product, the other education products were also being redesigned as part of this release and subsequent releases. One of the project goals was to deliver a unified end to end experience across all these products that was consistent, seamless and easy to use. Product Management leadership announced that "unification” was going to be a key party of product strategy going forward. However, we needed more clarity on what this meant. I facilitated a series of cross functional workshops to align on this unification vision, plan and deliverables. I talk about that workshop in detail here
I took some insights and outputs from the workshop that were related to admissions process and used them to inform the user flows and explorations.
User Flows
Using research insights and inputs from cross functional team members, I mapped out the user journeys for the personas I was working with. For example - the user journey of student across University website, Admissions Form, Email and Admissions Portal. I mapped out the existing journeys, validated these with cross functional stakeholders and discussed ways to improve and improved/ideal user flows
Part 1 - Student journey from Discovery to Application
Part 2 - Student Journey from Application to Monitoring
Part 3 - Student Journey from Monitoring to Final Decision and enrollment
Recommendations Experience
Ideations and Explorations
Using research insights and cross functional input on above, I created some concepts and explorations. I reviewed these with the team for their feedback and revised accordingly.
Low Fi Wireframes and Validation
Using the cross functional team’s input, I revised the low wireframes and ran some validation sessions with Sales Engineers. I gained feedback on:
Directional feedback - are we headed down the right direction
Is there any other information or any other actions they would like to see
What information / actions are not as meaningful as the others
What options work better than others for organization and navigation
Mid Fi wireframes
Using inputs from the validation sessions, I revised the designs and continued reviewing with the cross functional team, leadership and larger Salesforce UX community. I also worked through various design options with the team.
Mid Fi Example of Education Section
Options for organizing hierarchical info - Option 1
Options for organizing hierarchical info - Option 3
Options for Organizing Info to reduce Visual Clutter - Option 1 (surfacing all actions for user efficiency)
Options for Organizing Info to reduce Visual Clutter - Option 2 (surfacing most relevant actions to reduce visual noise)
Options for Organizing Info to reduce Visual Clutter - Option 3 (surfacing all actions for user efficiency)
Options for Organizing Info to reduce Visual Clutter - Option 4 (burying all actions under data table drop down menu)
Options for displaying "Ready for Processing" badge as need to alert to user but it is not an error
Mid Fi - adding a test score
High Fi mockups and Red Lines for delivery
Using inputs from the prior phase, I revised the designs and moved into High Fi mockups and Red Lines for delivery. The team was using SLDS (Salesforce Lightning Design System), so there is usually no need for Red Lines. However, this was the first time Education team was using Omni for forms and Flex Cards. So there was no visual design precedent for these components. So I created Red Lines to make sure engineers had what they needed to deliver on designs as closely as possible. I worked closely with them and reviewed builds often to provide them detailed feedback.
Processor verifies application
Processor verifies documents for accuracy
Application Reviewer reviews notes related to the application
Final decision assigned to an application
Student fills out Admission Form
Process finishes processing the application
Student monitors application status
Reference fills out letter of recommendation
Admissions Officer reviews application
Admissions Officer views recommendations
Red Lines
Application Reviewer reviews application and enters admissions recommendation
Before and After - Some examples
Here is a before and after for a few specific cases to help explain how the new design solved for usability issues, especially for the Processor persona. This role processes 100s of applications and 1000s of application items (transcripts, documents, education records) on a daily basis. So efficiency becomes very important here. Usually universities hire contractors to perform this role during application season. So they have very little background knowledge (Salesforce, etc.) It becomes even more important to provide a simplified experience that quickly provides them with the information they need quickly provide them with the information they need to perform the tasks they need to.
Leadership
Design Feedback: As part of this project, I was also responsible for leading the other designers that were designing features or redesigning other products within the Edu Cloud umbrella. I reviewed designs and gave feedback so we could forward in a consistent manner. Here are some topics we worked together on - Navigation
Design Practices: I established processes for how the designers will work together, where and how we will save artifacts, the kinds of ideation exercises the designers can perform and facilitated some ideation sessions as well.
Design Ownership: Since multiple designers were working on separate pieces of the end to end Education cloud multi—product portfolio experience, I identified dependencies and worked with leadership and product management to identify risks associated with these dependencies and mitigation plans.
Outcome
Products released March 2023. Announcement here
Achieved up to 66% improvement in user efficiency. This was key because we were delivering a product for Admissions offices which processes 100s of applications with 1000s of application items a day.
A simplified user experience. Usually universities hire contractors to help during the busy college admissions season. These contractors have very little Salesforce or background knowledge, so its important to deliver a simplified user experience.
Received executive and customer recognition for significant usability and efficiency improvements, especially in the application processing phase.
“As a Product Manager I worked with Manisha on the vision and design of our products. Manisha was very impressive and inspiring to work with. We collaborated on projects and her ability to understand the market needs and turn that into feature concepts was critical to our success.
What stands out to me is Manisha's ability to lead white boarding sessions, keep large cross functional groups engaged and organized, as well as her verbal, written, and design communication skills. She brought an energy to every project and I knew when we were teamed up that project would be successful and enjoyable to work on.”
Jason Fitzpatrick, Principal Product Manager, Stride Inc.
