BetterCompany Mobile App
Have a better workday.
How might we create better communication in the workplace?Practicing candid, constructive conversations is a good place to start. BetterCo is a mobile app that allows employees to anonymously connect with others in their profession for advice and support.
Summary | I joined BetterCompany one week before MVP launch, as an intern. Within a few months, I became a full-time UX designer and took lead on all Android UI and UX design. I worked alongside a small team of designers, developers, and the Founder to execute strategic business and community goals. Taking the lead on analytics, I championed data-driven design improvements for product features, user flows, layouts, and copy.
Role | Android UX/UI Design, Social Media, Marketing Content
Team | Eric Cleckner (icons and logo), Dave Chenel (illustrations and avatars), Omar Amin (iOS)
Scope | Visual redesign, onboarding, tag & filter, feed, profile, gamification, product simplification, matching algorithm
The Problem
Facing Fears
What stands between who you are and who you want to be? In many cases, it can be boiled down to fear. It’s normal to be afraid of judgment, of failure, or of appearing inexperienced and inadequate. These fears keep us from asking for help or support when we need it most. In many work environments, this results in employees becoming stuck, frustrated, and burned-out. In 2015, BetterCompany set out to build a digital space to champion this problem.
A missing support system in the workplace
BetterCompany addresses a problem that instantly drew me in with its relevancy and universality among millions of workers, including my friends and family: Bad communication and isolation at work
The Solution
Constructive, candid conversation with professional peers that can relate.
We set out to create a mobile app that would allow people to build up a professional supportive community through merit-based matching algorithm. Each person had access to their personally-picked community through a feed, where they could comment or post, and through private chat.
MVP
Strategically Saying “No.”
At launch, BetterCo was over-built and divided between two product visions.
1. Provide employees with advice, support, and encouragement from people that can relate
2. Provide a platform for open, honest conversation between coworkers at a company.
Our goal was to uncover the most important problem to solve, cut features, and simplify the overall product. Ultimately, we decided to cut inter-company communication (note: we later pivoted to support this with a separate product: HonestInterview)
Minimal Viable Audience
Streamlining our target audience was instrumental in connecting people that could relate and help each other. We positioned our product for job titles that were high-stress and isolated as these people had greatest need to connect with others. Going one step further, we defined the audience we were not building for.
“Understanding the motivations and goals of the community helped prioritize features, create design principles, and streamline our voice.”
Fostering a Community
Self-Determination Theory
Using self-determination theory to motivate users and create a more active, engaged community.
- Desire to improve skills and career competence
- Desire to improve the (work) environment
- Desire to belong and relate to a community
Visual Design
Creating an anonymous, safe, and constructive Environment
We design the “BetterWorld” to immerse users in a trusting, calming environment. Paired with anonymity and clear communication, we were able to encourage users to talk openly and candidly.
All illustrations By Dave Chenell
Morning
Afternoon
Night
“A choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.”
Staying Anonymous
Animal avatars created a fun, non-gendered, and positive alter-ego.
Avatars by Dave Chenell
Clearing up Communication
To facilitate better communication between community members, and to collect feedback for our product, we integrated multiple feedback channels into the app. This included in-feed reviews, “superthanks,” flagging, and private chat.
Dealing with anonymity
Common side effects of anonymity include trolls, hackers, and toxic user habits. We proactively designed to nudge users towards constructive behavior through positive reinforcement, gamification, and community-led moderation to maintain a safe environment while our user base grew beyond our eyesight.
Users received “thanks,” rather than “likes” for posts
Users were given goals to work towards to level-up
Gamifying good behavior encouraged constructive content
Iteration
Cutting Out Decision-Making Moments
We conducted testing to understand why people were churning during Onboarding. Through this, we discovered they were spending too much time setting up personal profiles before understanding the community value of BetterCo.
After several iterations, we created a flow that asked only the essential info needed to give people a useful feed and a relevant community.
Form over Function
To help fix an issue of over-notifying our users, we replaced badge notifications with subtly animating tab bar icons. While the delightful tab icons eliminated the “annoying red notification bubbles,” but, in hindsight, this was a bandaid fix for the real problem - bad notification delivery and bundling. In the end, this was a good lesson in streamlining functionality before adding extra design details.
Tabs, in order: Home, Messages, Profile, and Notifications, by Eric Cleckner
Reflections
Reflecting on my time and mistakes at BetterCompany, I’ve come away with several key learnings.
Be clear before clever
In wanting to create a fun, enjoyable experience, we tried to develop a playful voice (of the likes of Slack or Mailchimp). In the end, the voice did not carry over clearly and we were lost in metaphors and inside jokes. Without an expert copywriter at hand, I think it’s better to err on the side of clarity over cleverness.
Design for 100 users
With high hopes for exponential scaling and retention, we didn’t build a solution for a specific problem. The solution to this is to create a product that just 100 users love. By picking a niche of just 100 people (not 1,000 or 1,000,000 eyeballs), it allows you to frame the problem you’re solving in understandable, human terms. This concept is best summarized by PG here.
Solutions Agnostic
In hindsight, one of the clearest mistakes of BetterCo was that we had a product solution before we holistically understood the problem. While this was acknowledged throughout development, we were still not successful in disengaging from our fundamental product assumptions and starting from a blank slate.
Prioritize
Ultimately, BetterCompany went defunct because the business goals were not prioritized, or even clearly established. While we focused on establishing a large userbase, we failed to create a monetization strategy. Eventually, we were forced to pivot to a product with steady revenue (HonestInterview). Some ideas for monetization would be to sell digital products (stickers, custom avatars, themes), charge for extra connections, or provide a Premium version of the app.