UX/UI Design | Hesai Technology | Developed

Rationalization Suggestion
. An online system that promotes internal improvement within the enterprise

Highlights

Establishing a solution for rationalization suggestions, where employees can easily and specifically submit their rationalization suggestions. These suggestions can be promptly and reasonably evaluated and implemented.

Time Frame: Jan. 2022 to Mar. 2023

Role: Product Designer, UX/UI Designer

Involvement: UX Design, Interaction Design, Usability Testing, Visual Design, System Promotion

.Background

Rationalization suggestions are a method based on the experience and knowledge of employees to improve and optimize organizational operations. As the company expands (gradually growing to 1,000 employees), company leadership encourages employees to submit rationalization suggestions and requires the establishment of corresponding system to manage these suggestions. This helps promote employee engagement, improve efficiency, reduce costs, enhance product quality, and drive continuous improvement.

.Discovery

Roles in the Systems

After discussions with the leadership team, roles within the system and individual responsibilities were determined.

The Board

Review all submitted suggestions and their status.

Evaluate significant suggestions and decide whether to adopt them.

Examine the assessment plans for suggestions.

Rationalization Suggestions Administrators

Responsible for collecting and evaluating suggestions.

Responsible for driving and overseeing the resolution of relevant suggestions.

Assist various business departments in the execution of suggestions.

Employees

Initiator

Suggest and follow up on subsequent execution stages.

Implementer

Assigned by the respective department leader to implement the suggestion and complete it.

Suggestion Process

.Solution

Based on the discussion with the leadership team, the suggestion process in the system is primarily divided into five stages, and each user has different permission levels required.

Suggestion Stages

Submit suggestions with real names.
Provide a genuine and objective description of existing issues or shortcomings, and provide detailed improvement suggestions.
Attach relevant supporting materials if available.
Stay informed about the progress of the rationalization suggestion submitted by you in a timely manner.

Different types of suggestions are assessed by corresponding members of the administrator team, who provide opinions on acceptance or rejection.
If accepted, an implementer is assigned. If not accepted, the reasons are provided.

The implementer promptly communicates with the proposer to confirm the described issue and proposed improvement measures, and develops an implementation plan.
Progress is updated weekly, and notifications are sent to the submitter.
Upon completion, the application is submitted.

After the completion of the rationalization suggestion implementation, the rationalization suggestion administrator team conducts a meeting to review and approve the suggestion as completed.
The submitter is then notified of the approval.

Every six months, the rationalization suggestion administrator team organizes an evaluation of completed rationalization suggestions. Outstanding suggestions are publicly recognized within the company.

The Expected Features

After defining the suggestion workflow states, we considered the issues and requirements that various types of users encounter when using the system. We have determined the functionalities that need to be present in the system.

Employees

I both need to initiate suggestions and may be assigned to implement suggestions. I would like to check the status of both types of suggestions at any time and attach materials with files.

Submit

Attachments can be added when creating new suggestions.
Submit suggestions without participating in their implementation.

Implement

Receive reminders for pending suggestions to be implemented.
Weekly progress updates with the ability to record the progress.

The Board

I generally don't proactively check the system, but when I want to, I'd like to see all the suggestions and their current processing status. Sometimes I have to skim quickly and grab key suggestions.

Evaluate

Have authorities to query and manage all the suggestions.
View intuitive reports on suggestion submissions.
Display selected suggestions that have been evaluated for the entire company's learning.

Leader

As a member of the administrator team, I should easily track the status of the suggestions I'm handling and only accept suggestions related to my department.

Accept

Accept suggestions and assign an implementer, or reject suggestions with relevant reasons.
Suggestions outside of one's own responsibility can be forwarded to other administrators.
View all suggestions that have handled.
Receive notifications when there is a change in the progress of suggestions.

Our Challenge

Due to different user roles and permissions, users see different interfaces. In the early stages of the project, we discussed two approaches.

Plan A

Based on Roles

Users manually switch their roles to operate on different interfaces.

Plan B

Based on Status

The processing status of suggestions can differentiate the operation interface, and it visually represents the suggestion workflow in a more intuitive manner.

After conducting user tests with 12 colleagues and managers, the majority of participants agreed that defining permissions in the backend instead of user role switching is the better solution.

So Plan B won!

.Final Designs

Homepage Overview

All company employees can intuitively see the number of suggestions under various categories, and view selected suggestions, which encourages employees to submit more suggestions.

Employees need to select the suggestion type (which determines the administering manager) and location. They should fill in the fields for the subject, issue description, and so on. Attachments can also be uploaded before submission.

Create a new suggestion

Accept the suggestion

Administrators can operate on the suggestion details page. After acceptance, they can assign an implementer, advancing the suggestion to the next step. If not accepted, they provide a reason and return it to the suggester, or they can forward it to a more suitable administrator.

After being assigned a suggestion, the implementer needs to add details, and these details and attachments will be attached below the suggestion details. Upon completing the execution, they can apply for completion, and the suggestion will be evaluated.

Implement the suggestion

Suggestion Center

Users can view all suggestions related to themselves here and see the progress intuitively. If there are new developments in a suggestion, they will be displayed in the right-side message center.

Since its launch in August 2022, improvements to the rationalization suggestion system have undergone several iterations. It has now become the official channel for suggesting ideas within the company and is strongly encouraged.

234

Total Number of Suggestions

152

Total Number of People Making Suggestions

*The data was collected on 2023.09.20

.Reflection

The design cycle for this project wasn't particularly long, and the requirements were relatively straightforward. However, the process of discussing features and interaction methods with the product manager was quite interesting. For instance, deciding between switching roles and defining interfaces based on suggestion status was a choice we had to make. In this process, I, as a designer, focused more on user experience, while engineers delved deeper into system processes. The final solution incorporated some of my interaction design details, such as using color to define status.

Because there are many more complexities to consider in real-world projects compared to the design phase, if I had more time to be involved in this project, I would continue to gather user feedback, conduct more testing, and iterate further.

Rationalization Suggestion . An online system that promotes internal improvement within the enterprise