What does Lyearn do?
Lyearn is an employee productivity tool used by organizations. It helps teams align on shared goals, upskill with continuous learning, improve performance, and maintain engagement.
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The Problem
Having a good reporting structure is crucial for organizations to understand their performance. Unfortunately, Lyearn lacked consistent and well-defined reporting, which caused many issues.
One of the significant issues was that when clients requested to see their data, we provided it to them via Excel sheets and APIs that they had to analyze and visualize on their own. As a result, the burden of making sense of the data was on the client.
On the flip side, creating custom Excel sheets and API tweaks for each client was a time-consuming task that took a lot of developer bandwidth. Understanding and translating client requirements accurately also took significant client manager bandwidth.
Lastly, this process often involved a lot of back-and-forth due to incorrect requirement translation on Lyearn’s part and lack of system understanding by clients. This led to repeated asks for report generation.
The lack of consistency in reporting, high turn-around time due to bandwidth and clarity issues, and heavy lifting on the client’s part to make sense of the provided data significantly pulled Lyearn’s overall Net Promoter Score (NPS) down.
Therefore, with this project, we set out to enhance our NPS by bringing a reliable and consistent analytics module to Lyearn.
My Role
I took on the roles of both lead designer and product owner for 3 months.
After this, I had the support of a Product Manager.
I also had support from one other product designer on this project.
Target Users
Administrators in organizations who need to create custom employee reports.
Leaders & Managers who need to understand their team's performance and productivity.
Employees who need to track their own performance & growth.
Timeline
6 month.
The Research
We started by taking an in-platform survey to understand the current NPS from our users. With a 42% participation rate, we found that before introducing an Analytics module on Lyearn, -
Initial Product NPS = 48%
The Preparation
Analytics on Lyearn involved months of research, planning, trial, and error, and remains an ongoing, additive process.
Understanding the architecture
Throughout the project, I worked closely with the backend team to gain a thorough understanding of the architecture and the trackable data.
Collaborating for great UX
Additionally, I collaborated with front-end developers to ensure a seamless, lightweight, and elevated user interface and experience for the charts and reports - a quality often lacking in B2B analytical tools.
Researching data visualizations
I also dedicated time to learning more about data visualization for our diverse use cases. The objective was to understand all the potential ways to present the available data on Lyearn accurately, so that our users can view and create customized charts with ease.
The Solution
We made Analytics available on Lyearn in 3 primary ways -
Standard Reports
To answer commonly asked questions from Lyearn data.
Custom Reports and Builder
To give organizations the tools they need to dig into their data.
Employee and Team Profiles
To answer employee performance related questions.
Standard Reports
Our initial approach for this project was to build Standard Reports that would answer the most commonly asked questions. This, we found, was useful for clients with smaller teams and simpler programs. They desired pre-made reports that they didn't have to spend time building.
Another interesting problem we solved had to do with report sharing. Administrators on Lyearn wanted to share different versions of the same report with managers, but without giving them full permissions or access. To address this, we came up with the idea of Dynamic Filters. These filters would act as variables that administrators could apply to the report. The filter would dynamically adjust the report based on the profile of the viewer.
For instance, a "Manager is Me" filter on a team dashboard would display a report showing each manager only the data of their direct reports. This way only 1 version of the report had to be shared without worrying about others seeing data they’re not supposed to.
Snippets from standard reporting dashboards and its features. Standard & dynamic filters, data visualizations, and sharing & export methods were some of the things we created for these reports.
Custom Reports
One revelation we had from the time spent on research for this project was the extent of customization and control that larger organizations require for their reporting needs. After receiving long lists of client requests and conducting numerous client calls, it became clear that standard reports would not suffice for such organizations. They wanted complete flexibility.
For this, we created Custom Report Builders. They gave users the tools needed to dig into data on their own.
The builder allows full flexibility in creating, adding, and positioning charts to make a truly custom report. Users had the flexibility to choose from 63 metrics and 32 dimensions available on Lyearn and apply any breakdown or filter from standard and custom properties. This way organizations could draw any insight they needed from Lyearn - no matter how unique.
Employee Profile
Finally, we needed to provide employees with a way to reflect on their own performance, understand their progress on Lyearn, and see the value they were getting from using it. This was accomplished by displaying their Productivity Scores and breaking them down by skills, mindsets, goals, and activities. Managers also required this information to assess their team's performance.
To meet this need, we created Employee and Team profiles. These profiles served as comprehensive, real-time report cards for individuals and teams on Lyearn and provided a detailed breakdown of their performance.
Screens from the Employe Profile showing widgets designed to display an employee's productivity score & performance.
Hover details on distribution charts inside a manager's Team Profile. These charts are designed to help managers understand how team members are performing compared to each other.
The Communication
After our features were shipped, we knew our work wasn't over. Working with metrics, dimensions, charts, and insights can be a daunting task whether you are consuming extensive reports about your team or building custom ones for the organization.
We wanted to increase adoption of the analytics module by educating our users on how to use the data we are providing them.
Data Dictionary
For this, we created a data dictionary on our Help Center on Notion. The dictionary served as a knowledge base to -
Educate users on definitions of the data metrics and dimensions available to them and the features they were most commonly used with.
Help users learn which combination of metrics, dimensions, and properties to use to solve some of the common usecases.
In-platform Tooltips
Further, we brought metric and dimension definitions into the Chart Builder where they are most required by administrators trying to build comprehensive reports. This allows users to know what to expect from a dimension before selecting it by simply reading its meaning in the tooltip.
The Final Steps
We published a new NPS survey to understand if the introduction of analytics on Lyearn made a difference in the score. With a 40% participation rate, we found an 11% increase in the NPS.
New Product NPS =
48%
59%