Overview
Client: LINQ
Industry: Education & Finance SaaS
Project Type: User Persona Development
Role: Lead Researcher and Designer for User Personas
Project Summary
LINQ, a provider of ERP and school accounting software, faced the challenge of ensuring their platform addressed the distinct needs of its users—school administrators, accountants, and IT staff. By developing detailed user personas, we identified critical opportunities to enhance the user experience and tailor the platform to better serve each group’s unique needs. This case study outlines our approach to creating these personas and how they informed user-centric improvements across the platform.
Goals & Objectives
The primary objective of this project was to deepen LINQ’s understanding of its diverse user base and to address the varied needs of school administrators, accountants, and IT staff. LINQ needed to ensure that its platform was not only functional but also intuitive and aligned with the workflow and pain points of its users. Through user research, we aimed to create personas that would guide the product and design teams in making targeted updates to improve user satisfaction and platform efficiency. Ultimately, our goal was to enhance the overall user experience by developing a solution that was responsive to the day-to-day realities of each user group.
Research & Discovery
To build comprehensive user personas for LINQ, we embarked on a multi-phase research process to gather data on user demographics, behaviors, and motivations.
Demographics:
Using Google Analytics and internal user data, we identified three primary user groups:
- School Administrators accounted for 60% of platform users, primarily women aged 35–55 with extensive experience managing school operations.
- School Accountants made up 30% of users, typically aged 40–60, with strong finance backgrounds but limited technical expertise.
- IT Staff represented the remaining 10%, tasked with maintaining the platform’s functionality and integrations, and primarily interacted with the system during updates or maintenance periods.
User Behavior:
Through surveys, session recordings, and user interviews, we analyzed how each group used the platform:
- School Administrators used LINQ’s ERP tools daily to manage budgets, HR, and compliance tasks. Their focus was on ensuring the smooth operation of the school, with heavy usage of reporting and compliance features.
- School Accountants focused on financial management tools, including payroll processing, budget forecasting, and expense tracking. Their interactions peaked during key financial reporting periods.
- IT Staff were responsible for system maintenance, security, and integrations. Their usage was intermittent, typically focused on ensuring uptime and making system updates.
Each group interacted with the platform differently, with administrators and accountants using the system regularly, while IT staff focused on maintaining functionality and security.
Motivations & Pain Points:
In-depth interviews and analysis of support tickets helped us uncover the key motivations and concerns of each user group:
- School Administrators were motivated by the platform’s ability to centralize data and ensure compliance with school regulations. However, they expressed frustration with the learning curve and occasional system lag during peak usage.
- Accountants valued the platform’s precision in managing payroll and financial operations but struggled with the complexity of generating custom reports.
- IT Staff appreciated the cloud-based system and ease of integrations, though they encountered frustrations with occasional downtime and the lack of advanced configuration options for more complex setups.
Design & Strategy
Our design strategy was to create a more user-friendly platform by tailoring specific features and functionalities to the distinct needs of each user group.
For School Administrators, we streamlined the dashboard to make navigation more intuitive, reducing the time spent searching for key features like budget tracking and report generation. The goal was to minimize the learning curve and ensure smoother day-to-day operations.
For School Accountants, we focused on improving the customization of financial reports, providing training sessions to help them efficiently extract the data they needed. This allowed accountants to have greater control over financial forecasting and tracking, without relying heavily on technical support.
For IT Staff, we worked on enhancing system uptime and stability, particularly during updates, and improving integration capabilities with other school systems. We introduced more advanced configuration options, enabling IT staff to tailor the system to the specific needs of their school’s infrastructure.
Implementation & Development
The implementation of the user personas required collaboration between the design, product, and development teams to bring these insights into practical platform improvements.
For School Administrators, we simplified the user interface by redesigning the dashboard to make frequently used features like HR and budget tools more accessible. By reducing the number of steps required to generate reports, administrators could complete their tasks more efficiently, especially during high-traffic periods like the start of the school year.
For School Accountants, we added a customizable report generation feature, allowing them to create detailed financial reports tailored to their specific needs without requiring technical assistance. We also improved the platform’s overall user interface to better accommodate their workflow, with clearer labeling and intuitive navigation.
For IT Staff, we optimized the system to ensure smoother updates with minimal downtime. We introduced advanced configuration tools that gave IT teams more control over integrations with other school platforms, allowing for more flexibility in managing their systems.
Through rigorous testing and iterative improvements, we ensured that the updates not only met the needs of each user group but also improved the overall performance and stability of the platform.
Outcome & Results
The user personas we developed for LINQ led to several key improvements across the platform, resulting in increased user satisfaction and engagement.
- Improved Platform Efficiency: Administrators reported a 25% reduction in the time required to complete tasks like budget tracking and report generation, thanks to the streamlined dashboard and simplified navigation.
- Enhanced Reporting for Accountants: Customizable reports allowed accountants to generate financial statements more efficiently, reducing their reliance on technical support by 20%.
- System Stability for IT Staff: The improved update process and advanced integration tools led to a 15% increase in system uptime, with fewer support requests related to system maintenance.
Overall, the development of user personas enabled LINQ to make targeted updates that directly addressed the needs of its diverse user base, leading to a more user-friendly and efficient platform.
Lessons Learned & Reflections
Developing these user personas provided valuable insights into the diverse needs of LINQ’s user base. We learned that, while each user group had distinct motivations and challenges, their overarching goals—efficiency, ease of use, and stability—were shared. This allowed us to create a cohesive platform experience that catered to the specific needs of each group without losing sight of the broader user journey.
This project underscored the importance of integrating user research into product development from the start. By developing personas based on real data, we were able to help LINQ make informed decisions that resulted in a more tailored platform, increasing both user satisfaction and platform adoption. Through this process, we gained a deeper appreciation for how user personas can drive meaningful product improvements and align business goals with real-world user needs.