Tara.ai Insights

Talking to customers brought us to the most valuable data

I interviewed Engineering Managers and VPs to understand better what data can help them evaluate engineer performance. The pain points they needed help with were:

• Difficulty comparing engineers
• Difficulty comparing to previous periods
• Challenges in understanding who contributed
• Challenges in understanding who assisted others
• Challenges understanding the size of contributions

Collaborating with customers and our team

I showed an individual's work breakdown by Jira status and tested the report with customers. Feedback indicated the initial design did not meet user needs. I redesigned the report to break down each individual's GitHub activity by type and size and tested it again. This new view was more valuable, reinforcing the importance of user feedback in the design process. Users requested filters by type and date range and labels for milestones like kick-offs or launch days. When an engineer was underperforming, users wanted to compare their performance to previous periods. Based on this feedback, I iterated on the design, testing and refining it before reviewing feasibility with engineers.

Aligning with JS libraries to deliver faster

During the technical review, engineers identified limitations in the graphing library, so I devised a solution for adjusting the UI shapes. We weighed the pros and cons of customizing the library and aligned our date picker with the newly introduced Tailwind library. Once the solution was finalized, I completed the designs. I created detailed specifications, including primary flow, content states (skeleton, loading, empty, minimum content, maximum content), variations based on filters, validation (application error, page error), and interactions (hover, dropdowns, modals).

We created a report that customers love and use

Two weeks after the design went live, 100% of interviewed customers used the report and continued engagement at least once a month. We achieved an 83% conversion within the first month. The design significantly improved our product's value for customers and became a highlight during sales demos.