Apple

Revamping the compensation planning application

THE DEPARTMENT

The Information Systems & Technology (IS&T) department at Apple focuses on delivering internal applications and services across various business areas including Retail, HR, Security, Sales, Operations and more. The UX team within IS&T works cross-functionally to define and deliver experiences that impact Apple employees.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Interaction Design, User Research, Usability Testing

CONTEXT & CHALLENGE

While I was working within a design agency, I was contracted to work with Apple’s IS&T User Experience team as an interaction designer. One project was to re-design their compensation planning application with 3 designers. This tool is used by internal employees to set budgets and to plan salary, bonus, and RSU distribution during compensation planning events. While the tool was extremely flexible for different use cases, managers complained that the tool was so cumbersome and added to the stress of compensation planning.

* NOTE: All mocks contain fake names and compensation information

Figure 1: Compensation app prior to re-design — **Figure 1:** Compensation app prior to re-design

Process

PHASE 1: UNDERSTAND THE USER

To gain a deeper understanding of our users, we conducted 12 contextual inquiry sessions with various types of managers. We talked to new managers, leaders who had managers as direct reports, managers who worked in corporate, managers who worked in retail, and even managers who lived outside of the US.

Most sessions were done observing the participant use the tool in their office to understand how physical environment might affect the planning experience. This research helped our team gain empathy for our users, and the insights learned helped us create 4 personas.

Figure 2: Personas — **Figure 2:** Personas

PHASE 2: DESIGN & ADDRESSING USER NEEDS

We used the personas and insights gleaned from user research to guide our designs. Because this project was rather large, I’ll outline how we addressed user needs on a few selected features that I had worked directly on below.

PLANNING WORKSPACE

When observing users plan compensation with the existing tool, we noticed a few patterns:

Entering compensation for each direct report was cumbersome - Managers had to select an employee, select the value to edit within the displayed profile, enter the data with their keyboard, then select the next employee name.
Managers could not remember which plans they edited - This is important for a manager to know, so they can understand how their changes in the system impacts their budget.

To address these issues, we re-designed the planning workspace in a spreadsheet layout that is keyboard accessible (Figure 3). Managers can enter data directly into the workspace without having to switch between mouse and keyboard. Additionally, a highlight is displayed over the employee with an edited plan, and the specific cell that was edited to help managers see what they’ve changed. Working in tandem with the budget tracker, users can directly understand their planning and how it affects budget at a glance.

Figure 3: Planning workspace allows direct plan editing within a spreadsheet via keyboard, and highlights what values have been changed — **Figure 3:** Planning workspace allows direct plan editing within a spreadsheet via keyboard, and highlights what values have been changed

EMPLOYEE PROFILE

Some users prefer to have more information before assigning compensation. Some learnings from research:

Managers of large organizations are not familiar with their direct reports by name, which makes compensation planning difficult
New managers don’t know their direct reports at all, and do not have information needed to plan fairly

(Figure 4)

(Figure 5)

Figure 4: Mini profile

Figure 5: Full profile

PLANNING FILTERS

Senior leaders have direct reports that are often times managers with their own direct reports. During compensation planning, senior leaders distribute salary, bonus, and RSU budgets between their individual organization and the organizations under their direct reports. Because these individuals could have 100’s of employees, they need a way to understand overall performance of the organization, and how their budgets are being impacted during the planning cycle. Some of their filtering needs include:

Quickly finding plans that have been given compensation outside of provided guidelines
Finding plans within the organization that have been recently changed by their direct reports
Understanding overall performance in the organization, and who are the top or low performers

To address these needs, we designed an easy but flexible way to filter organizations by specific criteria around compensation, performance, location, plan changes, and more.

Figure 6: Filter wireframes — **Figure 6:** Filter wireframes

Figure 7: Add advanced filter flow — **Figure 7:** Add advanced filter flow

PHASE 3: PRODUCTION

After finalizing wireframes and user-flows, I created technical documentation to help engineering understand the interaction behaviors and logic for various features.

Figure 8: Selection of interaction spec documentation pages — **Figure 8:** Selection of interaction spec documentation pages

REFLECTION

This application was probably one of the most robust and complex applications I have ever worked on. I think that having a user centered process with a focus on understanding how managers used the application within their environmental context was key to the success of this project. It helped our team gain empathy for the experience, focus on the user needs, and communicate our design rationale to the stakeholders.

I was grateful to have had the experience to stay at Apple long enough to see this application fully developed, and hear the excitement from stakeholders and future compensation planners as they tested the new tool.