Empowering women and girls through negotiation skills training
Negotium at CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Timeline
1 year
August 2022 - Present
Role
Product Designer, UX Researcher
Team
1 PM, 2 Engineers, 2 Product Designers, 1 Content Writer
Tools
Figma, Google Suite, Pen & Paper
Why Negotium?
Research shows women negotiate less often than men across a variety of situations and this tendency perpetuates inequality such as the leadership and wage gap between men and women. One way to work towards equity is by teaching and providing scalable access to training tools that will empower women to advocate on behalf of themselves.
The Problem
When I joined the team, Negotium was in MVP development but was lacking in user engagement and interactivity. I worked closely with another designer and two developers to refine the design of the mobile application MVP based on user testing.
This project is currently ongoing with an aimed launch in Spring 2024.
Project Preview
This project has been listed by DesignRush among the Best Design Awards.
The Outcome
Improved User Engagement and Refined Product
With the new design we found that 100% of our participants indicated improvement in engagement and interest in the app. With the MVP design ready, the app is currently in a Beta testing phase via TestFlight with plans to be launched in the App Store in Spring 2024!
Background & App Context
Background Research
Existing App Audit
As a new designer on the team, my unfamiliarity with Negotium was advantageous for conducting an app audit.
I found usability issues and design inconsistencies, which were low to mid priority fixes. Overall, I hypothesized that while Negotium has helpful content to boost users’ negotiation skills, there is an overall lack of interactivity and incentive for users to return to the app.
The team had not conducted usability testing since designing the app and so my first priority was to conduct think-aloud user testing to test this hypothesis and uncover painpoints.
Existing App Audit
Existing App Information Architecture Diagram
Screen Audit Example
Usability Testing
I decided to conduct usability testing through a think-aloud protocol to gain quick feedback on multiple design concepts. I wrote the protocol and conducted 7 sessions with participants aged 18-26. In each session the participant was asked to complete a set of tasks on the app and think-aloud as they went through it. Our goals were to learn the following:
How easily can users navigate through the app’s features?
How well do users understand the lessons being taught and how applicable do they feel the lessons are?
What would enhance the user experience?
Could users see themselves using the app regularly?
Following user testing, I led a synthesis workshop where we used affinity diagramming to identify insights and opportunities.
Synthesis Workshop
Key Insights
Insight #1
There is an overall lack of incentive for users to regularly engage with the app. 75% of users said they find the content helpful but may forget to finish lessons or lose interest over time.
“Having more interactions or something new everyday would motivate me to use the app every week.”
Insight #2
Users want more flexibility and personalization when learning. Some users didn’t like having to navigate through the modules one-by-one.
“I’m more interested in personal, everyday negotiation. It’d be cool if I could learn based on the topic or see examples catered to my interests”.
Insight #3
Users want more opportunities to practice negotiating so that they can develop their confidence.
“I could see myself downloading the app but I need more opportunities to practice to get more value out of it.”
Project Goals
From user testing it was clear that before launching the app our team’s goals were to create a robust app that is:
1. Informative & teaches users how to develop negotiation skills
2. Engaging and provides incentive for regular use and practice
3. Practical and personalized for users to get support and build confidence in their everyday negotiations.
Design Challenge #1
Design Opportunity
How might we incentivize users to stay motivated and engage with the app regularly?
Usability testing made me realize that most users did not see an incentive to use the app over a period of time. I decided to tackle this painpoint first as it was a key aspect of user engagement and retention.
Market Research
How do educational tools keep their users engaged?
I looked to other popular apps to understand how they engage their users and boost learning outcomes. I realized that gamification is often used in educational tools as a technique to increase user motivation and improve learning.
Negotium already contained gamification elements such as lessons and a module roadmap. In our research, a points system was often mentioned as a way to incentive engagement. We decided that adding XP and achievements in conjunction with these would be effective motivators for users to return to the app.
Market Research
User Flow Map
Creating a user flow map helped me map out the screens that a user would go through after completing a lesson. A user can unlock an achievement during a lesson while XP is only triggered after completion of a lesson.
I was cautious of Flow 1 due to the number of extra screens; however, Flow 2 seemed too brief without much sense of achievement. Ultimately, I tested aspects from both when iterating on wireframes.
User Flows
UI Design
Wireframes
Since there was already an existing design system for Negotium I worked primarily on mid-fidelity wireframes and high-fidelity mockups before landing on a final design.
We decided to move forward with Option 3 as placing the XP on its own screen makes it more salient and users feel rewarded as lessons get harder and XP increases.
XP Wireframes
For achievements I also considered a separate screen but this seemed obtrusive and could annoy users if they unlock multiple achievements at once. Hence, I went for a less salient design by using badges. The animation of a badge provides a sense of reward among users.
Achievements Wireframes
Mockups
Final Design
When a user unlocks an achievement, it drops down as a badge at the top of the screen for 3 seconds before disappearing. After completing a lesson or mission, users gain XP. These various interactions are meant to extrinsically motivate users. Our team heavily debated the addition of streaks. Ultimately, I decided not to include streaks for the beta launch, since overly gamifying the app could have the opposite effect on users (reduce motivation and interest in learning).
Final Design for XP and Achievements (Streaks was not Implemented)
User Profile
With the addition of XP and achievements, I had to create a place where the user’s stats could be logged. The existing user profile was outdated and had been overlooked; hence, I worked to improve the design and incorporate the new gamification elements. Ultimately, I chose Iteration 1 - a simple card layout (Iteration 2 led to higher cognitive load and Iteration 3 resembled the module roadmap too closely).
I also decided to combined the user’s stats and achievements into one tab to make space for self-reflections in the other tab.
Iterations of User Profile
Design Challenge #2
Design Opportunity
How might we provide more opportunity for negotiation practice?
Although the existing app had lessons to educate users on how to negotiate, there wasn’t much opportunity to actually practice and apply their learning. Users wanted the app to be practical and personalized to build confidence in their everyday negotiations.
Existing App Features & Competition
Negotiation practice lacks complexity
Currently, Negotium lessons have interactive quizzes, reflections and scenarios. Scenarios allow users to apply what they learned in the lesson, but are only one step and don’t give the feel of a conversation. Hence, I saw an opportunity to design for more negotiation practice and include realistic and complex scenarios.
Existing Practice Elements
The competition has little to no negotiation practice aspect
I saw that negotiation practice was also a major gap in other negotiation apps on the App Store. Many apps were purely informational, or had overly simplified scenarios.
Negotiation Apps in the App Store
First Prototype
Introducing Multi-turn Scenarios
An idea we had was to add more nuance to the existing scenarios by adding multiple turns. Providing a three-step conversation for users to practice their negotiation skills would provide more depth to the negotiation and make practice more realistic. To test this idea, we made a user flow to map out this interaction and created mid-fi wireframes.
In a multi-turn scenario, the context is first provided to users, following which they choose a response and have 3 back-and-forths. At the end of the practice the user gets feedback on their skills. We quickly realized that not only would this require a lot of content generation since our team had to manually create the scenarios and responses for each path, but there also was not much scope for personalization or more complex practice.
User flow and Implementation Logic for Multi-turn scenarios
Not there yet…
After testing multi-turn scenario we realized that it still lacked the real-world complexity and feel of negotiating with another person. I used some brainstorming activities like Crazy8s and played around with chatGPT to simulate salary negotiation conversations to understand conversational nuances and I had an ‘AHA’ moment!
Second Prototype
Personalized Coach
With the advent of GenAI and chatGPT, we realized the opportunity to use an LLM-based chatbot that can enables users to practice negotiation scenarios and receive real-time personalized feedback and tips.
I worked with a developer to prototype this concept and from quick user testing we found that this offered value to users who needed negotiation help or wanted to improve their skills.
Rapid prototyping with developers
Once our team decided to move forward with the idea of a negotiation coach, I worked with the developers to create a user flow and high fidelity prototype that they could implement. The Negotiation Coach has two paths: ‘Mystery Challenge’ (a negotiation challenge is given to the user) and ‘My Scenario’ (user can create their own scenarios). For V1 we started implementing ‘Mystery Challenge’ first as ‘My Scenario’ would require more back-end effort.
User flow diagram - used to guide the development of the high fidelity prototype
High fidelity mockups
Other Design Decisions
Visual Design
Self-Reflections
Reflections are an important part of self-affirmation to boost users’ confidence levels. Rather than neglecting pages like this, I saw opportunities to bring in the space theme and better persuade users to review their past reflections and complete lessons.
Visual Design
Adding Color and Illustrations
I redesigned the mission complete screens to bring in more warmth and fun through the use of color and animations.
Design System
Creating Consistency
I worked with Sherry, my co-designer to improve the design system to maintain consistency across the app and update the UI to create a clean, modern look.
Next Steps & Reflection
Wrapping Up…
Next Steps
I’ve learnt so much about mobile app design and development from working in a small, agile team with developers, designers and PMs. I’m excited to see where Negotium goes in the future!
Beta Testing
We’ve started testing the app on TestFlight with the new practice and engagement features and plan to have one more round of refinement before launching our app in the end of Spring 2024.
Content Refinement
Our focus will now shift to developing the content further so that Negotium can cater to a variety of negotiation scenarios and styles. I’ll also be working on designing the website and other PR material so that we’re ready for the launch!
Key Takeaways
Learning how to balance the big picture UX with smaller UI design decisions
I felt myself getting too invested in details at times rather than thinking about the overall strategy first. When I design I always try to remember the “why” so that everything I design is purposeful.
Negotiating isn’t easy!
Since joining the team I’ve learnt so much about my own negotiation abilities and how much practice it really takes to become a confident negotiator. I’m grateful that in addition to deepening my design skills I’ve been able to develop some key life skills through Negotium.
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