Overview
Role
UX Design Intern, (Summer 2022)
Team
- UX Mentor (Vincent Plummer)
- Product Owner (Amy Reams)
Project Description
Exploratory: No Deliverable. Be curious, provide recommendations, and explore.
Learn, update, and expand upon existing UX work for Conga’s Sign Product. Assist in development of Conga’s Design System.
Goal 1: Understanding the Context
Who is Conga?
Conga is a Salesforce Partner working to simplify revenue lifecycle complexity every day, for every customer.
Conga’s Revenue Lifecycle solutions contain 12+ digital products, which crush revenue lifecycle complexity no matter the industry.
What is Conga Sign?
Conga Sign is the electronic signature product (eSignature) utilized regularly to quickly and securely sign documents and collect the signatures you need.
This product is about efficiency, low risk, and getting documents signed.
What is the Conga Sign Experience?
User Journey Mapping
To learn about the Conga Sign experience, I wanted to understand the interface and the current user journey. I decided the best way to do this was through a User Journey Mapping. This process entails understanding the product and the journey the user takes while experiencing the product. This was a good starting point because it would give me a stronger understanding of both the product and the users. From this mapping, I identified a 6-stage process to the sending/signing experience and 2-main users, the signer and sender.
Figure 1.1 - Entire Conga Sign Task Flow of Interactions for sending/signing documents.
Figure 1.2 - Conga Sign, Stage 3: Task Flow for Creating a Signing Transaction.
User Journey Mapping Takeaways:
22 Total Steps in Experience
6 Stages in Process
Identification of Different Interactions
Knowledge on process and order (before & after)
Q: What is the user’s main focus?
Figure 1.2 is a specific example from the process, Stage 3 of the Journey Map, which I identified as “Creating a Signing Transaction.” With this journey map, I was able to identify different levels of interaction within the product - decisions (diamonds), new screens (squares), and interactions required to advance (circles). By mapping this process, I gained insights into the current user progression in Conga Sign product and identify the user’s main points of focus.
After gaining some knowledge of the product, I wanted to gain more insights into Conga Sign users: the signers and senders.
Who are the “Senders/Signers” using Conga Sign?
Personas
To learn about the Conga Sign users, I conducted 10 internal interviews. To gather more information, I explored previously created personas from Apttus Corporation (rebranded to Conga after acquisition) and the Conga Marketing Team.
After collecting the data, I created Conga Sign user personas. Since Conga’s focus is on the enterprising marketplace, these personas are different than the traditional storyboarding persona. My goal in creating these personas was to increase knowledge and perspective about the users. I wanted to make my personas memorable for the Conga team. I liked to imagine a scenario where we were able to print them out and put them up, to keep the users at the forefront of our thoughts and intentions.
After some more discussion with the Product Owner, I built out the top 4 most important personas: The Signer, Legal Operations, Sales Representative, and Salesforce Admin, as seen below in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 - Salesforce Admin Persona, Other Top 4 Personas on the Right Side.
Building out personas can be a great reference tool to place the customers at the forefront of our mind at any time. With just a few glances at the Salesforce Admin Persona, you can find and understand their Core Needs, Frustrations, and Hopes as they relate to Conga Sign product. Knowing some of the activities users are up to and seeing who they work with on a regular basis can be very helpful.
A favorite part of this process was getting to network internally and meet more people from the Conga Team. It was funny to check back in with the team towards the end of the internship and show them my work. Each of them greeted me with a smile and shocked expressions at the accuracy of the personas I created during our single interaction.
These personas may only be related to the Conga Sign product, but this could be a foundational point for the UX team to build off and create more for our other products. For the role-based personas, some realignments of needs, hopes, and frustrations will need to be made, but overall the structure and data can stay the same. One could quickly branch off from these initial creations and expand to those other products.
Goal 2: Evaluate the Product
Where can I improve the Conga Sign Experience?
Content Audit
After gaining a better understanding of the Conga Sign users, I went back to the interface and completed a product content audit to systematically analyze and assess the contents of the product and identify areas of improvement. After the user journey mapping and personas, I believed I was informed enough to move forward in the design process. I used my prior knowledge of Task Flow to evaluate user’s main focus, with each screen and used Personas to provide direction for design decisions.
Figure 3.1 - Task Hierarchy Breakdown of Conga Sign Interface Experience.
In Figure 3.1, you can see one of my analysis, a Task Analysis Hierarchy Breakdown of the interface experience. The overall goal of each screen at the top and as you work your way down, the steps you need to complete to meet that goal.
After, I analyzed the Conga Sign computer and mobile version, I conduct the Content Audit. Each circle represents a comment where there is an design opportunity to be made.
Figure 3.2 - Content Audit with Comments on Interface Screens.
Content Audit Findings:
Screens contain multiple goals and lack details on what needs to be completed
Ambiguity in the process and what steps to complete
Identified inconsistencies within the user flow of the process
Storyboard Example
Here we have a screen from Conga Sign. In the current signing process, the user would’ve just started creating a new transaction and arrived at this screen. Now, add some perspective to the screen.
Using our Sales Rep. Persona as a lens for this example, we can empathize more and understand the value of our findings. The sales rep. wants and I quote, “to close deals fast and close them faster. The fewer clicks the better.” Also citing a frustration from this persona is that newer sales reps feel undertrained. So, in this case, not an expert user, and they want to be quick, and efficient.
Given this perspective, attempt to accomplish the goal of “entering the least amount of information while still proceeding.” Now, given the concept that this is a signing app, it’s pretty easy. But, why not make the experience seamless?
Required Steps:
Adding a Document
Adding a Recipient
This information at the bottom (transactional details) is optional. While that may seem obvious, hindsight is 20-20, so as the product designers, why not be more clear and more articulate?
At the top of the screen, there is no direction or clarity for what must be done to proceed. As a new sales rep., how can you be as fast as possible if you don’t know what is required?
An example of inconsistency from this same screen is when you click the back button, instead of taking you one step back in the process, it takes you to the home screen.
From here, I decided to explore the competition and try to generate more ideas for the Conga Sign Product.
Areas for Improvement:
Ambiguity
Unnecessary Clicks
Inconsistency
Competitive Analysis
I explored 4-products Competitor’s Sign Products to gain insights into competitors' signing processes and methodology. In figure 4.1, you can see the mobile dashboard screens for DocuSign, SignNow, and CongaSign.
From a UI perspective, it is easily identifiable how dashboards can differ. Also, from a user journey perspective, the order of operations for each app is different. Now, leading me to my main takeaways.
Competitive Analysis Findings:
Appealing UI
Functional & Effective
Applicable to the Enterprising Product Marketplace
Figure 4.1 - Competitor’s Sign Product Dashboard.
I believe within this product space, products struggle to have all three components. For example, prioritizing functionality over UI or using signing in a different context. Ideally, I’d like to spend more time carrying out this competitive analysis and maybe even do some UI analysis, but due to time constraints, I continued in the design process by creating sketches.
Goal 3: Improving the
Conga Sign Experience
Ideation
To begin my mobile iterations, I went through a few rounds of quickly mocking things up. It wouldn't be perfect the first time, but rather more about getting ideas drawn and visible.
Utilizing knowledge from all the Prior Steps in the process, I was able to ideate how to introduce changes into Conga’s Sign product. Overall, I kept the question of, “How can I make the signing process better?” in the back of my mind.
Also, since I was moving forward with mobile designs, the case use for the situation would be important. When using the sign product, 90% of the use case, the signer persona would be on mobile. Therefore, for the signing process, I decided to focus on that aspect.
Figure 5.1 - Whiteboard Mobile Screen Process and Concept Iterations.
Final Design & Next Steps
Unfortunately, due to my return to school, I was limited in my time for creating mobile iterations.
In Figure 6.1, is the newer look with Conga Branding and a nicer UI. One of my changes is subtle but present in the Email Header. The header now starts with the Due Date of the Signing. The header adds context to those receiving emails so users will know the urgency from a glance.
Figure 6.1 - Initial Mobile Mock-up and Redesign.
Next Steps:
Further develop mobile iterations
Conduct usability testing
Expand on previous stages in process
Other Projects
Design System
Getting to my other projects, here are 2 examples for the design. Supporting the UX team, I had the opportunity to do some iconography work. Iconography is on the UI side of things, so this was new for me. In total, I created over 200 components and 1200+ icons.
Figure 7.1 - Design System Iconography.
Also to support the team, I did an inventory analysis between the Figma design system files and the current storybook. Keeping track of inventory lets the team know the differences between Figma and Storybook.
In this example, you can see the difference between the design system and the current storybook. It is mainly a matter of what information hasn’t been created or what information is out of date.
Figure 7.2 - Example Identification of Inventory Analysis Data.
Reading Relevant Design Books, Articles, and Classes
Alongside my internship, I was able to read and explore more knowledge in my free time. This resulted in reading 8+ UX books and articles. Using Conga’s Udemy access, I went from white belt to lean six sigma black belt!
Figure 7.3 - Lean UX and Atomic Design Readings, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification.
Reflection: My Experience
I want to shout out to my Conga Community for making this internship an exceptional experience. Between the mentoring, assisting me with work, and even playing Ping Pong and chess, these people really made the experience more enjoyable and authentic every step of the way. Big thank you, everyone.
I particularly want to mention my mentor Vincent. He was extremely helpful and insightful throughout this experience.
This experience was an incredible opportunity for growth and to make an impact on an industry company. I was able to gain first-hand experience and seeking personal development through my mentor and Conga resources. I did this through day-to-day practices of UX design and learning first-hand, which UX specializations I enjoyed.
Regarding my impact, I was able to see where my work was able to make a visible difference and help my team. This was primarily noticeable through simple gestures such as assisting with the design system and the UX work for the Conga Sign Product.
