JIM REDESIGN - ZAIDYN (FP) FIELD INCENTIVES
OVERVIEW
ZS is presently undergoing a comprehensive transformation to enhance and streamline its core business application, Javelin, into the newly envisioned and seamlessly integrated user experience known as ZAIDYN.
The primary goal of this endeavor is to lay the groundwork for a user-centric system that prioritizes an intuitive interface and user experience. The emphasis is on simplifying processes, enabling self-service functionalities, facilitating self-learning capabilities, and ensuring overall ease of use.
ROLE
Sr. UX Designer
User Research, Personas, Interaction, UX, UI, Prototyping
& Usability Testing
Feb 2022 – Ongoing
BACKGROUND
ZAIDYN has four parts: Customer Engagement, Field Performance, Data and Analytics, and Clinical Development. Around 34 designers and researchers, from beginners to directors, are working together. Simultaneously, a large team of over 900 developers, engineers, managers and directors at various levels is building ZAIDYN comprehensively.
I am half the design team at ZAIDYN - FP(Field Incentives)
I started working at ZS in February 2022 as a Senior UX Designer for Field Incentives, a part of ZAIDYN Field Performance. In this role, I focused on improving the user experience and design of Field Incentives, collaborating with a Lead Designer and a Junior UI Designer. Field Performance includes Field Deployment, Field Incentives, and Field Activation.
User Field incentives is a product to motivate sales team with personal and rewarding incentives. Our objective is to develop a system that empowers clients to effortlessly create, implement, and oversee their business rules, sales crediting, and incentive compensation operations.
I’ve grown tremendously in the last 2 years, some key achievements of which I have listed below:
- Achieved a seamless and user-friendly experience across platforms.
- Collaborated with diverse UX teams to develop 3 personas out of 24, for field incentives.
- Initiated a shift towards a research-driven approach, conducting usability testing for all projects.
- Established a comprehensive design system for consistent implementation of components.
- Contributed to a unified look and feel across the platform.
UNDERSTANDING THE PAIN POINTS in JAVELIN (JIM)
Steep learning curve
Training and onboarding need a significant investment, especially for those unfamiliar with pharmaceutical terms.
Lack of guardrails
Open-ended system that doesn’t prevent user errors. OV's too technical and decoding errors takes up analysis time.
Poor error handling
Addressing errors are difficult to figure out and time-consuming and happens too late in the process.
Slow performance
Javelin takes a long time to process calculations and generate reports.
Lack of ZS ecosystem integration
JIM is not well connected to many of the ZS tools clients use in parallel, limited IDM integration.
Limited visibility into global processing
Difficult to understand current status of IC processing-execution, and report generation on global level
Manual global recording
Heavy effort to manually compile KPIs from each country into a global report
Non standardized architecture
Redundant, layered code that becomes difficult to change and slow system down.
This is the old Javelin Incentives Manager (JIM) dashboard showing all navigation screen and features.
PERSONAS
After research, we identified three user types our product aims to help. We connect with them through Zoom calls to understand and address their specific challenges.
FP - FIELD INCENTIVES SOLUTIONS
Based on the above problems (pain points) identified, I worked towards addressing these pains by coming up with potential solutions:
FI - Easy to use and superior error handling
- Intuitive UI: UI-driven configuration reduces learning time for operators across skill levels.
- System guardrails: UI-driven configuration proactively prevents common user errors; early validations notify issues before and during processing.
- Robust pre-check and delta information: Files validated immediately on load; pre-check shows readiness and data status and any changes since last run/previous cycle; cross run deltas to highlight the effect of changes or unexpected deltas.
Global Governance, Performance, Integration and Cost Efficient
- Standardized and speedier processing: Quick end-to-end for small client; no need of separate scenarios to handle data cadence/processing; AWS better scaling.
- ZAIDYN-connected: Seamless connection of crediting, eligibility, IC, contests and awards.
- Global governance dashboards: Including automatic processing trackers across countries.
- Built in global reporting: Available and integrated instantly; ad hoc and custom dashboards with built in BI tool.
- Built-in organizational systems: Plan Library, Metric and Plan Builder keep architecture standardized, editable, and uniform.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Subsequently, we developed a sitemap for our new system with the goal of enhancing the efficiency and clarity in presenting information.
INITIAL TASK FLOW
After having defined the features and solutions, I created flows for the main tasks.
USER FLOW:
Create a centralized platform enabling Global Directors or Country Leads to monitor and track compensation plan progress across multiple countries within a region.
TASK FLOW:
A solution to add IC plan setup. Users define who (teams, levels, roles) and what (WUs, products, channels) for incentives.
TASK FLOW:
Add eligibility settings and eligibility rules for the BU, TLR
FIELD INCENTIVES NAVIGATION
Based on user flow, task flows, and feature roadmap, I crafted a streamlined flow map for ease of navigation and functionality.
WIREFRAMING THE SOLUTION
GLOBAL INCENTIVES COMPENSATION – OVERVIEW
We built a central platform for country leads and global directors to oversee compensation plans across multiple countries. It’s user-friendly, showing data on current, past, and future incentives. This system helps efficiently manage and track compensation plans worldwide.
IC PROCESSING
We made a simple interface for country leaders to easily check and fix any issues with their incentive compensation plans. It helps them find missing parts, fix errors, and run the process smoothly. This makes everything faster and more accurate.
PLAN SETUP
Our solution makes it easy to set up incentive plans for employees. Users just choose who (teams, levels, roles) and what (work units, products, channels) should get incentives. They can specify details like plan type, weight, and calculations to ensure clarity. The system uses performance data to manage plans smoothly and efficiently.
ELIGIBILITY SETTING AND RUN
This setup uses rules to decide if employees qualify for partial bonuses or not at all. It looks at eligibility rules, business rules, and specific criteria. Users can run the process and get a score that directly affects how much they get paid, making sure we accurately and quickly calculate incentives. This step has also Formula Builder to create formula’s like earnings and payouts.
IC OUTPUT
With our solution, users can easily see both interim and final results after each run. They can check both current and past runs whenever they want, giving them a complete view of the entire process.
VALIDATING THE DESIGNS
I conducted usability testing sessions with users of different experience levels to ensure our new designs addressed their needs. Using prototypes and personas, I interviewed four users, observing how they interacted with the system from plan setup to the final output.
The testing showed that our system, ZAIDYN, is much easier to use than the previous tool, JIM. Users no longer need coding knowledge or SQL queries for rules, and the setup process is now faster, more informative, and intuitive. What used to take 3-5 days in JIM now only takes 1 day in ZAIDYN.
USUABILITY TESTING - DISCUSSION GUIDE
We identified areas for improvement, such as missing information, unclear terms, and complex business rule settings. Despite these, the overall feedback was positive, highlighting the significant time savings and improved user experience with ZAIDYN.
We’ve successfully addressed key challenges such as streamlining operator training, error prevention, and early-stage validation, alongside overcoming obstacles in global governance and enhancing overall performance.
RE-DEVELOPING THE DESIGNS AFTER UT
Here’s a preview of a few screens we’ve developed based on extensive usability testing. We’ve refined the task by incorporating valuable suggestions from our users.
RESULTS AND TAKEAWAYS
Since implementing the new field incentives in ZAIDYN, we’ve significantly simplified user tasks and eliminated dependencies on others to complete processes. Users have given positive feedback on the streamlined configuration of their plans and rules, saving them considerable time.
Key insights from the project include:
- Launching a strategic MVP plan with categorized tasks, releases, and sprints helps manage scope and deliver a high-quality product on time.
- User testing is an ongoing process post-development, focusing on constant iteration to enhance the user experience.
- Engage the engineering team upfront in the project to mitigate potential rework later on. Understanding technical limitations from the start informs a more effective design strategy and prevents unnecessary challenges during development.
- Keeping the user’s problems in focus is crucial, as solving their pains is the ultimate goal amid day-to-day challenges. Using personas on every stages helped us a lot.
CHALLENGES
The main issue in the project was keeping up with technology changes and maintaining consistency, all while ensuring a good user experience. For instance, when dealing with setting up plans and rules, we initially thought users had to use complex SQL and codes due to technical issues. However, I realized this wasn’t ideal. Instead, I suggested a simpler approach, eliminating the old complicated setup process. I used visuals to demonstrate a user-friendly solution, bringing together rules and plan setup through a user interface.
To tackle this challenge, I drew on my experience in making quick changes. I provided various examples to the team, helping us enhance ideas and continually improve the user experience while progressing with the project.