request capture

Made feedback a two-way street

Company: OnLoop
Role: Design Lead
Category: Mobile App
Year: 2022

Request Capture empowers users to take control of their growth by making feedback proactive, enabling individuals to easily request insights and close the loop on performance conversations.

The Problem: A Closed Loop Without Requests

Managers and team members often struggle to understand how they’re doing. OnLoop provided tools to give feedback but didn’t close the loop by enabling users to request it. As one user shared, “I crave regular and evidence-based feedback from my team but don’t have an effective and scalable way to get it.”

The absence of a proactive feedback mechanism limited user engagement, making feedback a one-sided conversation.

Understanding the need of our users

We conducted interviews with nine active users (five managers and four team members) from different organizations to uncover how feedback currently worked for them. These conversations revealed deep frustrations and aspirations:

“I appreciate feedback where I’ve sought it out, especially from my manager.”
“When I started, I had to figure out the dynamics of feedback in the workplace.”

Through affinity mapping, we identified two core user personas:

Alexandra (Manager): Wants visibility into her team’s progress and to foster open communication.
Sam (Individual Contributor): Seeks regular feedback to grow and advocate for their contributions.

Brainstorming with the team

We ran a Crazy 8’s brainstorming session with stakeholders and engineers to explore solutions. Through affinity mapping and a Risk vs Value framework, we prioritized a simple yet powerful feature: the ability to request feedback from colleagues.

Our guiding hypothesis:

“By empowering users to request feedback proactively, we can improve engagement and retention, fostering a two-way feedback culture.”

Designing the Experience

Since requests were designed as the counterpart to giving feedback, they naturally lived in the Capture flow, creating a seamless, two-way feedback mechanism. This placement reinforced the idea of feedback as a continuous loop rather than a one-sided exchange.

I approached the design with three priorities:

Integrate seamlessly into existing workflows.
Ensure requests are easy to create, track, and respond to.
Maintain consistency with OnLoop’s design system.

I mapped the customer journey and aligned the feature within the app’s ecosystem:

Requests were integrated into the Capture flow, aligning with the app’s core purpose.
Responses and history were stored in the Inbox, with shortcuts embedded in profile pages for quick access.

To streamline the design, I leveraged OnLoop’s existing components, ensuring brand consistency while accelerating development.

Iterate, Test, Improve

We tested high-fidelity prototypes with the same nine users who participated in the research. The feedback was both validating and eye-opening:

Delights: Testers appreciated the request templates and the ability to make feedback proactive rather than reactive.
Concerns: Some users struggled to locate the feature initially.
Actionable Feedback: Testers expressed a desire to tie feedback requests to ongoing goals, which was not available during testing but highlighted a key opportunity.

Key Improvements

Education Flow: Introduced an in-app walkthrough to educate users on how to find and use the feature.
Enhanced Discoverability: Improved navigation by adding shortcuts to profile pages.
Goal Integration: Based on tester feedback, added the ability to align feedback requests with ongoing goals before launch, significantly increasing the feature’s appeal.

Request Capture exceeded expectations across key metrics:

Increase in DAU (Daily Active User).

Monthly Active User (MAU) in 2 quarters post launch.

47.2%

Request completion rate post launch.

Reflection: blending user empathy with iterative execution

Designing Request Capture was a fulfilling challenge. The iterative design process, guided by user insights, allowed us to build a feature that resonated with users while meeting aggressive startup growth goals.

Although the introduction of new team members during development posed challenges, collaboration and a shared vision helped us deliver a product that exceeded retention and engagement targets. This project reinforced the importance of user-centred design and continuous iteration to create meaningful, impactful features.