Objective
My internship team was tasked with designing and exploring the viability of a Salary Benchmarking Tool. The projects goal was to allow clients to compare their salaries to the market, which would help solve employee retention and increase equal pay opportunities.
Project Timeline
Weeks 1-2: Onboarding and Introductions
Weeks 3-7: Research and Analysis
Weeks 7-10: Design and Testing
Weeks 11-12: Presentation and Wrap-Up
Deliverables
Figma file with final designs and specs
Presentation for stakeholders showing our research findings, designs, and recommendations
A final report outlining our entire process
PLEASE NOTE: Identifying information such as logos, navigations, brand colors, and names have been altered to maintain confidentiality. Please contact me at joecmaddux@gmail.com if you would like to see our full unedited presentation and/or report.
RESEARCH
Background Research
The first thing we did was organized client feedback through affinity mapping to highlight the common pain points and desires that clients wanted in a Salary Benchmarking tool. From our affinity mapping, we found three main themes:
Reduce the amount of manual labor done when importing employee data and understanding market data.
Clients want a tool that compares salaries internally and externally based on different filters to benchmarks that are catered to their company
Clients wants to make unbiased and informed decisions when deciding raises and pay discrepancies, and providing competitive pay
Client feedback, sorted
User Interviews
In order to get first hand perspective, we conducted 4 user interviews to gain more insight into specific workflows and see where exactly the Salary Benchmarking tool could fit in and be useful. We conducted interviews with a Principal Compensation Analyst, a Senior Talent Acquisition Recruiter, Executive Product Champions, and Managers of Product Design. I personally conducted the interviews with both Product Design Managers, using a semi-structured script that I helped create.
Interview Script
Personas & Journey Mapping
From these interviews, we created three main user personas, which we will use to inform our future decisions. These personas are:
User 1: Hiring Manager
A hiring manager needs up-to-date market compensation data to offer competitive, fair, salaries that attract top talent while aligning with company budget.
User 2: Compensation Analyst
A compensation analyst needs access to market benchmarks and internal pay data to design and maintain equitable, competitive, salary structures
User 3: People Manager
A people manager needs a tool to maintain and manage employee pay over time, ensuring compensation stays competitive and fair throughout employment.
Using these personas, we created a decision point model for each, to track the entire process of the employee life cycle.
Decision Point Model for Compensation Analyst
DESIGN & TESTING
User Flow
To map out how the needs of each personal would be adressed, we created user flows. We initially started by each creating our own individual user flows to see what everyone’s vision for the project was after our research phase. After presenting our flows to each other, we compiled one user flow to represent our unified idea. After many iterations, we came up with the user flow pictured here that outlines two main features of creating a new benchmark and viewing recent/saved benchmarks.
Final user flow
Information Architecture
After finalizing which screens we would design, we mapped out the specific information and actions associated with each one. The IA helped us define how content and functionality were organized, and visually mapped out how users would navigate between screens. Throughout our project, it served as a blueprint for the tool’s structure, and a reference point for evaluating and refining user flows.
Final information architecture
Lo-Fidelity
After completing our user flow and information architecture, we moved on into creating low-fidelity wireframes. Similarly to the user flow, we each created our own wireframes before combining them.
Design System
While I cannot show any examples for privacy reasons, I utilized an internal design system to complete all of my hi-fidelity designs. This meant learning what each component accomplished, referencing documentation to determine how certain components can be used, and using standard page layout and architectures.
Data Vizualization
This project also featured heavily data visualization work. I led this work, as I had previous experience with data visualization. Below is one of my brainstorming sessions to determine which data visualization would be the best for this project. We worked with a third party data visualization partner to bring these ideas to life with sample data. These visualizations, which you can see in the completed designs, went through many iterations, and were designed to fit in with other visualizations in other parts of the system.
User Testing
In order to test our designs, we completed 5 comprehensive user test with internal stakeholders. These test followed a structured approach, with specific tasks to complete and report on. I personally conducted the tests for both design managers, where we got feedback on the user flow, as well as design system feedback.
Chart of user test results, sorted by task.
Solution
After 12 weeks, we had completed the project, with solutions in the form of high fidelity Figma designs. These designs had gone through many different iterations, and was approved by design systems team members to ensure complience. The header and colors have been changed for privacy.
Outputs Page: Base Pay
Outputs Page: Total Compensation
Edit Saved Benchmark Side Drawer Job Library Side Drawer
Handoff
In order the handoff our designs to development teams, we needed to complete 2 crucial steps that would serve as a blueprint for developers to interpret our designs. The first image shows the spacing off all our elements, and the second shows which specific components were used from our design system. Together these instructions can allow any designer to understand and recreate our design using only the company's design system.
Design Specs: Spacing
