FEATURE DESIGN AND TESTING FOR AN HOURLY WORKER APP EXPANSION
PROJECT SUMMARY
Leveraging insights from market research and current state customer feedback, our team designed a set of feature concepts and completed user testing to understand the potential viability of a new product offering for Branch, a leader in instant worker payment and shift-swapping technology. Ultimately, our testing revealed that while there was some appetite for these product changes, additional work was required to validate desirability and viability of this additional market audience.
INITIAL CHALLENGE + OBJECTIVES
CURRENT STATE ANALYSIS
User feedback revealed that while there was a general sense that features related to messaging coworkers or managers and getting a paycheck advance were seen as “robust”, “very helpful”, and “easy self-service”, it was clear that these features existed in silos from each other and the app did not offer much to bring the two together into a cohesive experience.
Additionally, though Branch wanted to move into the job search space, initial data and usage activity indicated most users having a transactional relationship with the app, mainly connected to their current needs of viewing their schedule and managing their paycheck, as needed.
ACTIVITIES AT A GLANCE
Customer Interviews
With their focus on workplace visibility and employee empowerment, Branch provides a strong mobile-first option for hourly employees and their employers to gain the visibility and access they need, both to manage the overall work schedule and employee paycheck options.
While Branch had a strong foundation to support the hourly employee, they believed there were opportunities to leverage their app to provide additional support for their users. They approached our team looking to explore features that might help them add value to the current app experience by exploring the question…
HOW MIGHT WE INCREASE CONNECTION BETWEEN HOURLY EMPLOYEES AND ADDITIONAL WORKFORCE OPPORTUNITIES?
Determine market competition in hourly workforce job connection space (and Branch’s place in the market)
Create up to 5 brand-connected feature concepts for Branch app expansion
Complete job connection feature concept desirability testing with 10-15 users
Provide clear recommendation (and next steps) related to app expansion and additional features
FEATURE DESIGN
Through a market assessment and competitive audit, we identified that Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Cragislist, and even Facebook were the most common places to find hourly job postings.
We discovered several standalone apps focused on helping users find hourly work, with features designed to meet the needs of employers and workers. Employer features allowed them to post jobs or even individual shifts to fill open needs in their business, with comprehensive hiring tools, resources, and advice. For workers, we saw common “job hub” features, allowing users to search by job title, industry, location and pay range. One app even included a “salary calculator” that allowed users to see pay breakdown by year, month, bi-weekly paycheck, and daily amount based on expected earnings and hours worked.
[Objective #2: Create brand-connected feature concepts for Branch app expansion]
Seasonal Job Postings
Holidays or other known busy seasons may necessitate additional employees, but only for a short time. This feature allows managers to post seasonal specific opportunities which employees can then apply to to pick up additional hours at different locations within their company.
As the manager user begins to post the job, the current location of their store or business is populated on the form to ease the burden of data entry. Basic job information can be entered, with larger multi line text areas set up for the job responsibilities and requirements. The dates needed fields can either be typed directly into or have a date selected from the pop-up calendar.
The employee sees the job fully formatted, complete with job title, pay rate, dates of work, and location immediately in view. A single tap allows the employee user to apply to the job with their created resume link
Easy Apply Resume Formatting
Employees can currently create a profile that includes information that is also standard for most resumes. To simplify the work needed to apply for jobs, employees can create a formatted resume from their profile to download as a PDF or create a link that can be used to apply for jobs on the Branch App.
The Easy Apply resume formatting leverages existing profile information. Users can easily add a photo and personal summary alongside professional experience and skills in the current version of the Branch App. An updated three-dot menu alerts users that further action can be taken on the current profile page. This allows easy access to the feature without interrupting the existing experience unnecessarily. Once tapped, the menu displays options for the user to download as a PDF or create a resume link to be used on Branch App job postings.
[Objective #3: Gain insight into customer desirability for job connection features and resources]
DEVELOPMENT TEAM COLLABORATION
As part of our design evaluation and presentation to our Branch project sponsor and other leaders, it was important to us to provide a clear understanding of the potential investment that would need to be made to bring this potential new feature set to life. To do this, we held a brief consult with a development lead and another senior developer to estimate the size of effort for building each feature. The images below are from the document we presented to and shared with Branch leaders to summarize the potential features and the results of that effort consult. These were initial estimates* that were meant to provide a reasonable range of effort, not an exact commitment for development time required.
*for the Branch development team, their typical estimate is that 1 point is approximately 4 hours of work
USER TESTING
FINAL ANALYSIS + RECOMMENDATION
Feature Prototyping
User Testing
CHALLENGE
OBJECTIVES
[Objective #1: Determine market competition in hourly workforce job connection space (and Branch’s place in the market)]
Market + Competitor Research
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Our team’s goal was to do initial concept testing with 10-15 users. After further consideration, we decided that a Kano Analysis with current users of the Branch app would be our best means of getting feedback from a meaningful number of people. We opted to conduct the Kano Analysis via survey sent to current Branch users, with the goal of 20-25 responses per user type (managers + workers). We received just over 30 survey responses for both, with the following insights gleaned:
Current sentiment among Branch app users was positive—users expressed that the app was easy to use for their intended purposes, namely viewing their schedule, finding ways to manage shift-swapping with coworkers, and seeing their paycheck information
Feature Onboarding was consistently an attractive feature—both managers and users consistently rated this way, with multiple users specifically indicating that they wished there was a similar onboarding function for the base experience when they first joined and began using the app
Among the feature set tested, there was mixed sentiment about using Branch as a job “marketplace”—As with Feature Onboarding, this sentiment was shared across both managers and workers, with some users intrigued by the addition of new features, while others not interested in using the Branch app in this way
[Objective #4: Provide clear recommendation (and next steps) related to app expansion and additional features
CONCLUSION
Based on our market research, competitive audit, and user testing, our final analysis shared with the Branch team was that there was not clear, convincing data from our work to prove out fully investing in the job connection feature sets. We outlined a recommendation for additional work related to market evaluation, user research, and additional feature exploration which we believed would add more qualitative insight into potential changes to existing concepts or rationale for different features to meet potential needs of job-searching hourly workers.
UPDATE: Shortly after the conclusion of this project, Branch began developing and finalizing their pitch for Series B funding to pivot away from a scheduling + payment company to focus solely on payment features and functionality.
Job Features Onboarding
To help promote and encourage adoption of the Branch App job related application updates, several onboarding screens alert and educate current users about the specific details and function of the new features.
The first visit to the app after the update populates the onboarding screen, allowing users to swipe through and learn about the various features. These screens can also be included in the current onboarding that populates for new users on first app open. A short title and one sentence description help orient the user to the overall idea of the new feature and how it might help them in their current workflow. Specific screen calls to action invite users to try out the new feature they are seeing described. In a future build out, this could lead to a more interactive “How To” tour.