Workflow automations

Workflow automations

Workflow automations

Workflow automations

Automation for repetative tasks for big companies with a lot of projects.

Company

Teamwork

Company

Teamwork

Scope

New feature

Scope

New feature

Role

UX & UI, Research

Role

UX & UI, Research

Year

2021

Year

2021

Context

"Today I had to do exactly same thing with different tasks 8 times"

Many desk professionals waste time on manual tasks (e.g., tagging managers on blocked tasks, adjusting categories depending on the state of a ticket). As told by users of Teamwork, they would even abandon us for platforms that can take all that pain away.

Good news is that workflow automations that allow you to setup chains of events, are a thing. Arguably, in 2024 when AI is going stronger, it doesn't seem to be a big deal. But that was back in 2021 when workflow automations just started to shine.

What You'll Learn

This case study explores designing a no-code automation solution for utmost flexible platform with tens of interconnected features and data attributes. Most importantly, for users who are not quite technical.

My Role

As UX researcher and designer, I identified functional jobs to solve, led usability testing and full cycle design to deliver the final solution. I collaborated with our visual designer to leverage branding and with engineering team.

Goals

Reverse churn due to lack of Automations by offering low-entry-bareer solution for teams that heavily rely on standarazied processes.

Outcomes

Workflow automation saw a 30% adoption rate in the first month, highlighting user interest. To reach a wider audience, we identified the need for further customer education in the domain.

Experience change

From

All manual task and project management or custom code

To

No code solution that empowers everyone to automate

Trigger/Problem

Problem

We started seeing increased customer feature requests for automations from existing users. On the other hand, users on trial periods explicitly called out lack of automations comparing to our comepetitors.

Main challenges

  • Defining Triggers & Actions: We researched user tasks for automation to offer relevant options (via data tracking of existing events)

  • Simplifying Complexity: How can we make automations appear simple and follow the best no-code principles?

  • Educating Users: We addressed varying user familiarity with the concept through educational resources and feature onboarding.

Have a look at our promo video to understand what Automations can do.


We placed a bet

Automation templates and custom automations will greatly help team managers, and position Teamwork among "smart" project management tools.

Automation templates and custom automations will greatly help team managers, and position Teamwork among "smart" project management tools.

Automation templates and custom automations will greatly help team managers, and position Teamwork among "smart" project management tools.

Main goal

Solution

One of the key challenges was to understand the benefits and tradeoffs of two types of automation editors:  

Sentence approach: At that time one of the prominent apps with a sentence-like automation editor was Monday.com. Essentially a user would type an automation they need using cues When and Then.

Hypothesis: It feel natural to users to write a sentence


Split block approach: With split block When (Trigger) and Then (Action) are placed one under the other or side by side.

Hypothesis: Splitting two triggers and actions and using standard dropdown makes automation process more clear


A/B testing surprised us by revealing a strong user preference (90%) for the split-block editor, despite initial concerns about its technical feel.


Details

Solution

The final solution that went into production is a split screen Trigger – Action approach. Users were offered two options to create automations:

  • Via templates that were based on most common tasks their account has (defined by an algorithm) has from

  • create automations using various Triggers and Actions.

Check the video to see the whole flow the user will go through to create an automation from a template or from scratch.


Process

First we defined what tasks are most repeated across Teamwork and based the MVP selection of Actions and Triggers on that. We also decided on preliminary success criteria that would guide us through the project.

Competition analysis helped us understand most known approaches to automations and identify two approaches that looked most promising.

Of course, testing was a great way to define the best UI that would work for all types of people: tech savvies and non-technical people.

 

Please inquire more information about this project and my experience at Teamwork.