Project Background

Replicon users were frustrated that the email notifications, which they described as ineffective and limited. The legacy system had a rigid framework and the system provided no flexibility into configuring custom notifications by users without contacting Replicon customer service. My goal was to keep communication smooth between employees, supervisors, and account teams by engaging every user, reach anyone, anywhere, through multiple channels.

As product lead, I spearheaded a re-design of Replicon's notification system from concept to completion. As a result, active users submitting accurate timesheets for payroll processing increased by 60%, saving mid to large companies millions of dollars in overtime hours. These notifications keep item submissions and approvals on schedule for over 1.5 million users.  

WHO

• Notification Setup
   
  • Company Administrators: These users have global super powers. They decide when and who receives notifications through different channels. 
  • Replicon implementation team: These users have global super powers. They help simplify integrations and implementations for millions of businesses.
     
• Notification Receivers: 

  • Company employees: These users fill timesheet's daily or weekly, submit Time off requests and expense receipts for reimbursements. 

  • Company supervisors: These users approve employee time and expense data so that employees get paid on time.   

  • Company payroll Manager.: These users have super powers. They process all the time and expense data and generate reports and pay employees.  

Challenge:

I helped define the problem space we were solving for and set expectations accordingly. 

• The system needs to provide company administrators an interface to customize email content and send them to users,
• Administrators need to send emails in German and French
• Tapping the Notification link from your device should take the user to the specific section of the App to complete tasks. eg: Approve Timesheets 
• Build support for mobile push notifications  
• Provide administrators a way to customize and set notification preferences for a single and multiple users.
• Content strategy for email and mobile push message 

RESEARCH & INSPIRATION

• Through the user community Replicon was getting requests from users to personalize and add support for mobile push messages 
• We interviewed with 5 customers, 10 Replicon implementation specialists, 100 Replicon employees and 50 Replicon Managers.

• Research surfaced the following: 

  • Admin users were rarely changing the body content 

  • Setting notifications easily for multiple users,

  • Personalization and mobile push support. 

  • Take immediate actions from notifications without opening the App. 

I researched a few Apps for notification behaviors to grasp how to make user experience more engaging for all customers. I quickly started by adopting a few common UI patters.

Hypothesis: Smart Notifications

I believe that by delivering Event and Time triggered messages instantly to users through multiple channels; email, push notifications, SMS and well-timed in-app messages I can increase user engagement, user retention, and most importantly increase app revenue. 

User Journey Map

I defined the two main data points, "event sensitive" and "time sensitive" actions, that prompt users to take next steps. Doing this helped me determine what data I could use in my design and at what point in the flow it should be revealed to the user. I followed by providing quick sketches, user flows, content startegy and journey maps for a "Notification Preferences" UI.  

Wireframe

Step 1: Administrator sets notification preferences for all users. 

As a admin user, I can setup notifications quickly so that company employees can receive timely notifications through email and mobile push channels. 

Time Sensitive notifications are types of messages that are clustered together based on batch actions that occur within the Replicon system eg: As a supervisor, I want to receive a collection of weekly timesheet for approval on every Friday at 2:35 pm so that I can submit timesheet for payroll processing on time.

Design considerations: 

I adopted common patterns to build the user interface;

1. Radio buttons; to select Notification type; "Event" and "Time"
2. Checkboxes; to enable Email and or Mobile Push message, 
3. HTML editor; to edit "Body Content" of the message
4. A  "Send To:" (field); to setup "Recipients". The auto complete multi select pattern allows you to filters by user name and role.
5. A "Reply To:" ( Field) for "Sender" (pattern for receiving a return email). 
6. Insert Attributes: To "create a new notification" with variables, start by clicking "Insert attribute" and the variable picker will appear. You can insert this variable within the body content of the email or Push message. 
7. Multi select auto complete pattern:  

eg: Supervisor the user is presented with options that they can pick from the "Reply to" input field. This input field is a auto complete multi select pattern.

Administrators "Create new attributes" 

As a admin user, I should be able to  quickly create dynamic data to include in email and mobile push channels so that company employees can receive contextual personal data through all touch-points. Eg: A users #First_name will be replaced by "Anna" in the notification. 

The code sharing functionally within Slack interface inspired me to design a notification setup that allows users to write code snippets of Python code that act as key value pairs to create a attribute. These attributes get dynamically replaced with content when the user receives a notification through email and or push message.

Step 2: Employee receives notification

As a Employee, I receive a reminder two days before the submission date to submit timesheet for January 30th 2015 so that my supervisor can approve it.