Problem
As a Deskbird user, how can I be in control of who follows my profile and can see my bookings & schedule?
Enterprise customers based in Germany want the deskbird app to adhere to their privacy requirements, per local law. The challenge? We had a very tight turn-around to release this and we needed to use the existing architecture of the tool.
Stakeholders
Understanding user needs
Deskbird had recently released the “Profiles” feature which allowed users to share and view colleague schedules.
Now, this feature needed to satisfy compliance with German regulations. Our Product Manager gathered user needs directly from the requesting enterprise customers. Together with the PM & Dev lead, we broke them down into requirements.
Users should be able to request to follow colleagues with private profiles
Users should be able to view requests and approve/deny them
Users should be notified about new follow requests
Users should know if a colleague’s profile is private
Users should be notified about new follow requests
Organizing permissions
We had 3 layers of permissions & privacy. This feature required us to introduce one more, which created a lot of complexity. To ensure there would be no conflicts in permissions, we defined how they would interact with each other.
Permissions by user role (i.e. global vs. office admin)
Permissions on an office level, if there is more than one
Permissions on a user group-level, if user defines groups
Privacy permissions on an individual level
Defining Follow Behavior
I started by researching existing “following” paradigms. We heavily based our functionality on Instagram. That level of privacy control was needed because, for example, a manager may need to see their employees’ schedule, but may not want them to see theirs.
If I accept your request, you can see me but I may not be able to see you.
Mapping Out User Flow
Defining behaviors
With the general idea of how following should work, and with the permission levels well-defined, we mapped it all out and created detailed user flows so we could start getting feedback from our engineering team.
Wireframing
Defining how users interact with UI
With the direction approved by all stakeholders, we wireframed out our UI Design needs for each flow/scenario. Below is an example flow of a user searching for a colleague and requesting to follow them.
To ensure clarity on interactions and UI changes, we highlighted notable elements in red for our engineers.
Hi-Fidelity Design
With the direction approved by all stakeholders, we wireframed out our UI Design needs for each flow/scenario. This served as a crucial communication device between our PM, Engineers, and Design.
We added a "Private profile" toggle to enable and disable to the user settings page. It was decided to not emphasize this setting so much, which is why we didn't add it higher.
How we display private profiles on the web app.
How we display private profiles on mobile devices.
Clicking on the follow button will change it to a pending state, letting the user know that the follow request was sent.
Clicking on the follow button will change it to a pending state, letting the user know that the follow request was sent.
Tapping on the "Following" button will unfollow the colleagues, letting the user know what will happen if they do so.
User is notified via email about the request. In the email, they have the ability to review the request and accept or delete it.
The user is notified via their mobile device as well.
User is notified within the colleagues list (at the top) about requests, where they can confirm or delete.
On mobile, we follow the exact same behavior.
Impact & Next Steps
Balancing timelines, managing restraints, designing collaboratively can be tricky, but it is entirely doable. Working on this project reinforced the importance of relying on the strengths of my teammates in Product and Engineering – early and often.
We launched the feature on both web and mobile by the promised date.
The client that requested the feature were very happy with the results and the support provied along the way.
We rolled out a nice hand-book for the office admins to understand the feature.
Created a research proposal ahead of time to measure adoption, engagement, and how users interacted with privacy settings.