Perflo is a team diagnostics tool that identifies areas where teams could improve upon to increase productivity, retention, or overall effectiveness. The tool has $1M funding from Project Management Institute.

While managers may have their own knowledge and sense of what may be the appropriate action to do in a team, they don’t always have clear answers as to what is happening within their teams. Managers are busy and they do not need more tasks or worries. Thus, effective behavioral design and nudges can be highly effective here.

The Problem

As we launched the Slack and Microsoft Team features, we realized teams were wanting managers to have a more active role in increasing their overall team effectiveness. While our team diagnostics and insights tool aimed to provide a voice for teams to express feedback, it also needed to encourage managers to act upon the corresponding feedback. As the Behavioral Science Lead, I wanted to increase manager action using best behavioral science and UX practices so that it would bring the tangible results teams are seeking from their managers as they complete the micro-assessments. Creating tangible results for the teams would generate value and increase adoption of our tool.

The Solution 

We developed a functional MLP of the feature that nudged managers to take effective action for their teams. I aimed to create an experience that targeted the manager’s behavioral barriers through behavioral design, ensuring that key interactions were behaviorally-driven. 

The Role

I conducted user research, defined key personas, ideated features based on behavioral science, evaluated the product features, and designed the high-fidelity mockups before sending off to the development team.

• I led the research, development, and ideation of key product features in addition to the nudge content framework.

• I created the sketches,  wireframes, low-fidelity mockups, and defined the technical requirements and product rules.

• I collaborated with the Frontend Lead and UI Designer to design the mockup and high-fidelity prototype.

• I worked with Backend Engineers and Data Scientists to brainstorm what were feasible features for presenting the data.

• I/O Psychologists also provided the recommendations and suggestions for the Manager Action content, where copywriters finalized the copy for implementation.

Essentially, when managers interact with our product we want them to think: “This makes a lot of sense. I could see this working well in my team. Why haven’t I done this before?? I should implement them ASAP.”

High Level Goals

• Make sure the insights are easy to interpret, no complicated data

• Convey team responses to Micro-Assessments in a meaningful way

• Make it clear what are the identifiable/predictable risks in teams

• Make it easily accessible to see how teams across different functions are performing

• Guide managers to focus on improving and take action

• User research - I chose to do user interviews to have a better understanding of why and how managers may be hesitant to take action in a workplace setting - from a qualitative and attitudinal stance

• Literature review - I want to collect more data about the behavioral barriers managers have and synthesize the insights from literature review and other secondary sources

The goal was to understand the senior lead/manager’s needs, challenges, and pain points. I interviewed 3 Senior leads in an agile setting: Agile Master, Agile Coach, and Engineering Manager. My team also interviewed another 2 Senior Leads: Technical Project Manager and CTO (Software Architect Engineer). We also had data collected from other Senior Leads from previous projects. 

★ Insights

• Managers are busy supervising and managing many team members or teams. They needed an overview of how members or teams across different functions were performing

• Managers want to see the discrepancies and how aligned their teams are

• Managers in these agile settings were motivated to increase productivity, efficiency, and ability to identify risks in a way that was efficient and real-time.

First step was to do a behavioral diagnosis of managers. 

Target Behavioral Outcome: Manager takes action in addressing team effectiveness

In addition to collecting data from Senior Leads, I also conducted a behavioral analysis to further identify what were the headwinds (frictions) or tailwinds (no perceived benefits) that Senior Leads were facing that prevented them from taking managerial action based on collected team insights. 

★ Insights

• What are some frictions?

  • Managers do not have strong relationship or trust with the whole team

  • Managers may be putting more effort to helping individual team members rather than the team as a whole.

  • Managers are not taking immediate action is because they do not have enough cognitive capacity at the given moment.They are busy with other priorities.

• What are the lack of perceived benefits?

  • Managers are unable to prioritize and try to stay within their comfort zone

  • Managers want to save face by proving they are rational decision-makers and remain consistent in their decision-making, even if they were poor past decisions. They are constrained by their past experiences

  • Managers do not anticipate the expected outcomes associated with the target action.

  • Managers value immediate benefits over long-term outcomes -  it is hard to guarantee success

Based on the insights from primary and secondary research, I narrowed down the design implications for addressing the behavioral barriers.

• Frame suggestions as altruistic and emphasize the social benefits, such as how taking action can prevent negative consequences

• Use implementation intentions and have managers write out a plan so they engage and remember it more

• Write down goal to align the manager's intention to action in the future

• Pair the suggestions with reminders and timing

• Connect the managers with their future selves and identity

I also researched and developed a detailed Manager Action framework that aimed to guide the Manager Recommended Action content to be simple, actionable, empowering, yet preserving manager's freedom of choice. The guidelines reflects best practices for nudges and ease of reading.

I also assisted in rewriting and restructuring the Implementation Guide for managers. This was a critical document as part of the process because it guided managers on how to onboard their team to use Perflo and how to prepare for different scenarios.

1. Social proof: Social endorsement cues from reference groups can establish perception of social norms, making it more influential.

Impact: Increases managers' likelihood of taking action by showing that others in similar roles are doing the same.

2. Loss aversion: People tend to be loss averse, thus highlighting the negative impact and consequences of a particular key area will motivate manager more.

Impact: Drives urgency by making the cost of inaction more salient, pushing managers to act quickly to avoid negative outcomes.

3. Chunking: This section breaks down the suggestions into bite-sized chunks, along with a message near the CTA intended to induce loss aversion tendencies.

Impact: Reduces cognitive overload while creating a sense of urgency, increasing the likelihood that managers follow through.

The new behavioral design aimed to not only be more engaging but more specifically targeted towards manager's motivations and ability to take effective action. The design reflected insights and findings sought from the behavioral science literature as well as user research. We anticipated a 15-25% increase in manager action completion rates over sustained use.

It was fascinating and gratifying to interpret these findings into tangible and feasible digital designs for managers to act upon.

This experience has taught me that both behavioral science and UX has its applicable and significant role in the product development process. Combining the two makes the final end-product to be more robust and evidence-driven.