Unifying and Enhancing the Consultant’s Journey

User Research - Benchmarking - Wireframing - User Experience - Visual Design - Interaction Design - Prototyping - User Journey Mapping - Design Expert Review - Jobs to Be Done - QA - Design System

Overview

Egon Zehnder, a trusted market leader with an elite global network of executives, needed to deliver unique, future-ready value propositions faster than the competition to maintain its position. They asked us to help create and establish the foundational structure for 'Zendai,' integrating essential assets and existing support apps to enhance consultants' daily workflow.

Client
Egon Zehnder, Germany & US

Duration
3 months | Jan - Apr 2023

Role
As design Lead, I carried out all design activities encompassing UX/UI, while coordinating a team of 4 designers handling diverse tasks to meet the goal. Responsibilities included gathering requirements with the product team, conducting research, planning and estimating design work, organizing and executing the creation and maintenance of the design system, and ensuring a smooth handoff with Dev.

Main Challenges

Amid the urgency to launch an efficient tool for consultants, here are some of the main challenges I identified within the project:

01


Limited contact with real users due to their 100% manual work and very busy schedules, highlighting the inefficiency of their process.

02


Tight timeline, with only 3 months to complete the entire discovery and design process.

03


Time management challenges in coordinating the design team, planning with the product team, and communicating with stakeholders..

Design Process

This process provides an overview of the main activities. Each step includes various alignment meetings and iterations of the process and designs. As mentioned, direct contact with end users was minimal, so we placed significant emphasis on field observation, analyzing data provided by the client, and discussions with experts.

Experience principles

Overcoming Challenges and Maximizing Impact

Designing with Limited User Access

Despite the tight project timeline and stringent client protocols limiting opportunities for end-user conversations, we successfully gathered insights through emails and calls.
However, we identified key moments in the user experience that presented potential for digital transformation:

01 Recording Interactions

Limited contact with real users due to their 100% manual work and very busy schedules, highlighting the inefficiency of their process.

02 Tracking Executive History

Tracking an executive's history involved relying on emails and team meetings, which lacked a centralized and efficient system.

03 Relationship Building

The responsibility of remembering important dates and milestones in executive relationships primarily fell on the assistant, creating a heavy reliance on individual memory.

Aligning Visual Styles

Creating a New Iteration of the Design System

We conducted a visual analysis of the client's products and observed significant discrepancies in their design system. To ensure visual alignment and migrate all DS to our proposal we undertook some activities.

Reviewed the three design systems being used concurrently by the client, identifying and highlighting best practices.

Mapped out the required components, along with the existing organisms and atoms, and determined which ones needed to be created.

Developed an execution plan that leveraged existing libraries' atoms while creating new components as necessary.

Created components based on iOS guidelines, streamlining the documentation process for development and saving time.

Through these efforts, we aimed to establish a cohesive and consistent design system that would enhance the client's product offerings.

Strategic Initiative: Zendai

The solution

Zendai serves as a strategic initiative to propel Egon Zehnder into the future as a market leader. This platform caters to consultants, executive assistants, experts, executives, and client companies, streamlining workflows through features such as Candidate Snapshot and Report Writing.

Leveraging Avature's tech stack, Zendai ensures a deep understanding of users' needs, facilitating personalized experiences and anticipatory support. High adoption rates are crucial, emphasizing a consistently beautiful and customizable tool.

We streamlined the process by consolidating multiple steps and formats into a single, efficient flow tailored to meet the specific needs of the consultant. This streamlined flow enables consultants to quickly access executive information, review their history, and take notes seamlessly.

Making complex things simple

Performing Multiple Tasks Seamlessly

In the desktop version, we created the flow to be dynamic, allowing consultants to perform tasks seamlessly within a single interface.
 This optimization offers the following capabilities:


  • Efficient executive search with an always-accessible list.


  • Detailed executive information display.


  • Ability to add notes specifically related to each executive.


  • Visibility of notes made by other consultants regarding the same executive.

  • Results

    I. Integrated Design System
    Our design system harmonizes the best practices in user experience and visual branding, providing a unified framework that simplifies the alignment and mapping of components. This saves valuable time and effort in both design and development processes.

    II. Executive Information MVP
    Our MVP consolidates executives' information from various sources, presenting complex data in a clean and user-centered interface. Through agile development, we ensure a rapid turnaround, preparing the product for testing within a short timeframe.

    III. Versatile and Modular Interface
    Our interface is designed to be modular and adaptable, catering to the unique requirements of each stage in the consultant's interaction with executives. Its flexibility ensures a seamless experience, precisely tailored to meet evolving needs.

  • Take aways

    I.Advocate for increased interaction with users.
    It is essential to closely understand the user and their context, even when developing a functional product that meets business expectations.

    II. Organization was the key to success.
    The team's ability to identify priorities and adapt quickly to changes that arose almost every week was the culture that helped maintain a healthy work environment and a common goal.

    III. Communication and teamwork, an inseparable combo.
    A vital source for aligning tasks, clarifying expectations with the client, and involving them in the design and development process.