Case study: Improving the UX of a collaboration app notification system.
Updated 23rd March, 2023 → One of my UX recommendation (The Message tab) has been implemented.
About Polywork
Polywork is a place to discover opportunities to collaborate with people. Speak on podcasts, beta test apps, and partner on side projects & more.
I downloaded the iOS app on the 19th of Jan, 2023 and have used it to connect with people that were willing to mentor me on getting my first PM role and I have also provided some help on the platform. Basically, I would say it is a more focused LinkedIn.
And congratulations to the team for winning ProductHunt 2022 Golden Kitty Award for the Creator Economy Category
About the project — Improving the UX of Polywork Notification
The learning curve for the Polywork and Time To Value (TTV) is actually short which is a good thing, I was able to quickly use my mental models from other social media like LinkedIn and Twitter to use the app.
However, the notifications system was a bit confusing, it was hard for me to tell which notification was for me and that of others that I had commented on. I have also now discovered today (25th Jan, 2023) that I missed some requests because it is not so visible from notifications and I also didn’t get any prompt within the app that I have requests. I probably would have gotten a mail about it but the emails are so frequent that I stopped checking them hence, the best place to notify me about it would be the app. Currently, the notifications are text/copy led, this means I need to really put some extra care into reading and if you are like me, I mostly glance through notifications.
This is not to take anything away from the product team, they have done massive work and I am very much in awe of the awesomeness of the app. Kudos to the Founder and everyone involved.
This is an attempt to improve the UX of Polywork Notification
So far, I have seen there are four kinds of notifications
A. Opportunity from Others
- Someone else commented on the opportunity you commented on — I honestly would take out this feature as it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Unless someone replies to my comment on the opportunity I commented on.
- Opportunity for you
B. Opportunity you created
- Collaborations request/acceptance
- Interested in your opportunity
- Commented on your opportunity
C. Follows/Highlight/Pluto
D. Messages
Requests: This is when someone shows an interest in your opportunity. You will need to accept and respond to begin a chat with them. I think this is an important feature/notification and should not be hidden under profile dropdown, because it is the aha moment when someone agrees to help you out. So it should be tied to messages.
Because I have only used the Opportunity post (wrongly, because the kind of post I posted the first time should have been an availability post, maybe this is something to look at but I got a message from Polywork’s PMM and it helped me understand that part), I assume this is how the notifications works for other posts (Availability and Highlight).
My Approach
I will broadly categorise the Notifications under two tabs
A. For You: This is where you find all notifications for posts created by you, follows, and highlight.
- Opportunities you created
a. Collaborations request/acceptance
b. Interested in your opportunity
c. Commented on your opportunity
2. Follows
3. Highlights
B. Others: This is where you find community related notifications for post that you commented on and things you might like to check out.
- Someone commented on the opportunity I commented on
- Opportunity for you
- Pluto
Messages
Message notification will no longer appear under the notification tab
Also requests will move from the profile drop down and will be a second tab under messages called requests.
Polywork has implemented my UX suggestion to improve the in-app messaging experience.
Thanks for reading, I’d love your comment and feedback.
Tools: Whimsical for Documentation and LoFi
Role: Product Manager, UX
Kindly check out the Polywork App on iOS.
