To understand process right, draw process wrong

Project

One of the teams wanted to add new features in the internal assistant app for HR-specialists. But, at first, they needed to understand our hiring process from an HR point of view. They asked us to study the hiring process and find possible points of improvement.

Objective

Our objective was to draw a process diagram for hiring activities in our company. And find some problematic sections there.

My work

Our team consisted of me and one other researcher. My responsibilities were to make a research design, write a scenario for interviews and pilot it. I chose in-depths problematic interviews as our main instrument. But, the pilot interview showed, that it’s hard for respondents to talk about the whole process. So we decided to draw a process scheme for respondents.

Result

That was a huge success. Respondents started to speak more lively. Some of them even noticed errors and inaccuracies in our scheme and started to draw their variants. In-depth interviews gained some co-creative flavor, the physical scheme made the abstract interview easier for respondents. Also, the wrong parts of the scheme engaged respondents to give us more information about the process.

Reflection

After this project, I used this trick several times. And it works every time. People need to correct other people’s mistakes works as a great ice-breaker. And visual stuff helps analyze the abstract process.