upraised.co
Project Duration
Mar 2022 - Nov 2023
Role
Product Designer
Collaborators
Upraised, India's upskilling Ed-tech platform for product management roles, operates in a cohort format—guiding users through Learning, Interviews, and Job placement.
Over 1.6 years with the company, I led the design of the Interview experience, sharing a timeline of updates. I've chosen 3 projects out of 12 completed during this period.
Designing Interview Interface v1
The Context
Users currently utilise two platforms for interview preparation: P2P Interviews on Slack or Retool, and Expert Interviews on Platform called Preppa.
This fragmented approach introduces challenges, including tracking progress, understanding preparation status, and the inconvenience of navigating multiple products.
Problems faced by users
Lack of seamless navigation between the dashboard, learn, and interviews forces users to log into a different platform to view interviews.
The current information architecture does not support the smooth integration of additional features on the platform.
The old flow
Implemented solutions
Implemented a major change by migrating interview systems into the product, providing a unified learning experience. Users can now learn, conduct interviews, and track job progress in one place.
Additionally, this led to a restructuring of information, establishing a robust foundation for the development and integration of new features.
New Flow
User Research:
Conducted user Interviews
Step I — Formulate Questions
Step II — Conduct 30 mins calls with the users
Step III — Gather insights & formulate Hypothesis
Step I — Formulating questions
Created user research questions to explore specific stages in the user journey, including transitions from learning to interviews, the booking process, and the pre- and post-interview experiences.
An example question is —
How do you choose experts when booking interviews?
Step II — User Calls
I conducted 30-50 mins calls with around 15 users, recorded the calls to transcribe and find emerging themes.
Step III — Gathering Insights
By conducting a frequency count of these themes, I identified key areas for improvement, leading to hypotheses for future versions.
Top 3 Insights
Peer to peer Interview
Not much awareness about how should one give feedback to
their peers.
Expert Interviews
Need guidance about planning the expert interviews. Users have
shown interview related anxiety.
System usability
There were some navigational challenges highlighted by users, especially when they want to see the feedback, no overall view.
Interview interface v2:
Interview library, action items
Several projects were initiated based on user feedback and the product roadmap.
Let's delve into one of them.
In the Expert interview setup, product leaders collaborate with Upraised to conduct mock expert interviews for users.
On one fine night, around 9:30 PM we received this message in the WhatsApp group of all the experts
Pain Points
Experts face a recurring challenge of users canceling interviews at the last minute, impacting their experience.
The cumulative effect of frequent last-minute cancellations has resulted in increased frustration for many long-term experts.
Experts perceive a lack of effective measures by Upraised to address the ongoing issue, leading to a decline in their empathy for users.
Analysis
I and product manager, Aditya. We were flatmates at that time — We sat for 3-4 hours that night to study the root cause behind this problem.
We collected the reasons from the users, we thought it will be a good start to analyse those reasons.
Root cause
The highest frustration arises from last-minute interview cancellations. Focusing on solutions to minimize these cancellations will alleviate the associated pain.
Solutions
We used a combination of solutions to reduce the number of cancellations.
Solution 1
Adding a warning alert if the date of interview is too far in the future, same if there are 2 interviews in < 3 days
Solution 2
Implemented a modal communicating the cancellation policy and introduced a soft limit on the total interview cancellations.
Solution 3
Improved the cancellation flow by adding friction and improving the reason-capturing mechanism.
Result
These initiatives led to reduction in the interviews cancelled, and the metric went down from 40% interview cancelled/week to 20% interviews cancelled/week.
Project — Interview Interface
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Project timeline
Jan - Nov 2023
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