Case Study

Connected Workflows: Designing In-App Communication to Unlock User Engagement

  • Role: UX Manager / UX Lead
  • Company: Yum! Brands

  • Core team: Lead Product Designer, Research Assistant, Graphic Designer

  • Partnered with: Product Owner, Business Analyst, Solution Architect, Engineers

  • Scope: UX leadership across research, strategy, stakeholder alignment, phased redesign, and rollout

Some details and visuals have been redacted or adapted to protect proprietary information. The case study emphasizes leadership approach and outcomes over exact designs.

a centralized feed to surface relevant updates across regions and locations. Posts included visual content, tags, and role-labeled interactions. The layout supports light-touch commenting, with filters to prevent noise and ensure managers see only what’s relevant to their responsibilities.

1. Problem Statement

Our internal platform lacked a built-in communication system, which led to fragmented workflows for key user groups — particularly franchisees, field teams, and operations managers. Users were relying on external tools like email and WhatsApp to align on tasks, share updates, and escalate issues. This disconnect caused delays, reduced transparency, and created a lack of accountability within the platform itself.

Ops stakeholders raised concerns about delayed response times due to communication breakdowns. These bottlenecks not only impacted execution speed but also diminished trust in the platform’s ability to support day-to-day collaboration.

The issue was echoed in more informal settings as well. During on-site visits and casual chats at restaurants, several users openly complained about having to constantly switch between WhatsApp and email just to coordinate basic tasks. The frustration was clear: communication was happening around the platform, not within it.

This presented a strong opportunity to design a context-aware, in-platform communication layer that could reduce tool-switching, improve task clarity, and make collaboration more seamless and trackable.

2. My Role

I led the end-to-end design of a native communication layer to improve engagement by enabling cross-role collaboration within the platform. This involved aligning user needs with business goals and guiding a cross-functional team from research through rollout.

  • Role: UX Lead overseeing strategy, research, and execution

  • Responsibilities:

      • Drove strategic alignment across product, engineering, and operations

      • Led UX research synthesis and translated insights into product direction

      • Facilitated stakeholder workshops to shape solution requirements

      • Scoped MVP definition in collaboration with PMs and tech leads

      • Guided design delivery and QA throughout sprints

      • Supported design rituals and team processes to ensure velocity and quality

      • Maintained a strong focus on franchisee and operational needs across all phases

3. Discovery and research

To explore how users currently communicate across roles and platforms, we conducted qualitative user research early in the project. Our goal was to uncover friction points, unmet needs, and behavioral patterns related to daily communication and task coordination.

Research Method

  • Methodology: Semi-structured user interviews

  • Participants: 4 users across 2 distinct roles from 2 different brands

  • Sessions: 45–60 minutes each, conducted remotely and in person during field visits

  • Collaboration: Partnered with another designer for synthesis and note-taking

  • Tools used: Miro for affinity mapping, FigJam for synthesis

Key Insights

  • Information Loss & Uncertainty
    Users reported regularly missing announcements and often couldn’t confirm whether important messages were received.

  • Fragmented Channels & Tool Switching
    Communication was split across email, WhatsApp, and internal tools — leading to context loss, slow responses, and manual duplication of effort.

  • Cumbersome Reporting Workflows
    Users had to download reports, attach them to emails, and manually remind recipients via WhatsApp — creating inefficiency and error risk.

  • No Support for Scheduling
    Users couldn’t schedule messages or reports for later, which was problematic during off-days or vacations.

  • Reminder Fatigue
    Managers resorted to phone alarms or personal hacks to remember daily and weekly report submissions, especially during high-pressure times.

A two-column visual table mapping user insights to design decisions. The left column lists pain points discovered during user research, such as missed announcements, fragmented tools, and manual reminders. The right column shows corresponding design actions like implementing a centralized feed, adding in-app notifications, enabling attachments, and prioritizing transparency through comments. The visual illustrates how research findings directly informed product design choices.

4. Design strategy

After exploring multiple communication concepts, including chat-based threads, push-only announcements, and inbox models, we focused on a “feed-style” experience: a centralized, structured stream of updates anchored in key workflows and locations. The goal was to move teams away from fragmented tools and into a unified in-platform space designed for clarity, transparency, and ease of use.

🎯 Key Design Decisions

  • Feed Hierarchy by Location
    Introduced nested group logic, where restaurants roll up into areas, and areas into regions: enabling scalable visibility filtering without overwhelming users.

  • MVP Feature Scope Prioritized Attachments
    Decided to support photo and file attachments in the first version, deprioritizing videos and learning content to focus on operational use cases.

  • Two-Way Communication with Commenting
    Included commenting functionality from day one, ensuring open visibility and full transparency for anyone with access to the post.

  • Planned Future Integration with Task Management
    Designed the feed architecture to accommodate future integration with manager tasks, aiming to merge discussion and action in a single place.

  • Social-Native Notifications
    Implemented push and in-app notifications modeled after familiar social media behaviors: new posts and comments would surface naturally through visual indicators.

  • Deferred Scheduling Feature
    Chose to exclude scheduling of announcements from MVP due to technical complexity and risk of disrupting real-time communication flow. The team identified it as a future enhancement.

🛠️ Process Highlights

  • Developed low-fidelity flows across the entire user journey with weekly stakeholder reviews to align on direction early

  • Defined a strict MVP scope once feasibility and estimates were clear, keeping delivery lean and focused

  • The design team simplified flows to focus only on the most essential actions to reduce user friction at launch

  • Validated concept direction with users using interactive prototypes, confirming clarity around core interactions

  • Borrowed from familiar social media paradigms to create an intuitive and comfortable experience for managers, lowering the learning curve

5. Concept Validation

After defining the MVP scope and core interaction model, we conducted concept validation sessions to assess clarity, usability, and user confidence in the proposed solution.

Validation Format

  • Participants: 23 users across 2 roles and 4 brands

  • Team: 3 designers facilitated interviews and collected feedback

  • Method: Remote user walkthroughs of interactive prototypes, followed by structured Q&A

  • Goal: Evaluate intuitiveness of feed navigation, post creation, and commenting model

Outcomes

  • Overall Satisfaction:
    Average usability score of 4.5/5, indicating strong understanding and comfort with the feature set

  • Task Completion:
    Users completed core feed tasks (posting, reading, commenting) with an 82% success rate

  • Most Requested Enhancement:
    Comment moderation controls, especially for high-stakes or sensitive updates

  • Popular User Suggestions:

    • Customizable Groups to target updates to specific audiences

    • Special post formatting (e.g., for official announcements)

    • Expanded emoji options to mirror informal chat behavior

    • Ability to mention individuals in posts

Key Takeaways

  • The feed model aligned well with users’ mental models shaped by social media platforms, validating our design principle of familiarity-first

  • Participants felt the feature would significantly reduce tool-switching and increase visibility of updates

  • The request for moderation and group logic reflected readiness for more scalable collaboration, which we noted for post-MVP planning

6. Outcome, Learnings & Impact

The feature was successfully launched as a contextual communication feed, aiming to centralize updates, announcements, and task-related discussions. It was designed with MVP focus, strong cross-functional alignment, and tested with a core user group. However, initial adoption was lower than expected.

Post-launch data and feedback revealed key barriers:

  • Users struggled to break habits around external tools like WhatsApp and email

  • Visibility settings led to confusion about who could see what

  • Lack of real-time triggers made it harder to build repeat usage or form new habits

What I Learned

This project gave me deep insights into launching communication features at scale, including:

  • Behavior change is a product of ecosystem design — UX alone isn’t enough

  • “Contextual” features need to be visible, timely, and clearly valuable to drive adoption

  • Launching internal tools requires internal champions, onboarding, and habit scaffolding

  • Adoption strategy must be designed alongside UX, not afterward

Most importantly, I realized we didn’t engage a wide enough user base during the initial research phase. While our concept testing was well-received, the limited participant pool didn’t reflect the full range of behaviors, tech comfort levels, and communication norms. This limited our ability to anticipate adoption risks across different regions and user types.

🔁 Impact & What Came Next

While adoption of the initial release was modest, the project became a strategic foundation for how we approach communication within the platform. Rather than investing heavily in expanding the current tool, we’re now focusing on embedding its core functionality into broader workflows through new feature designs. This approach allows us to build on the original vision while aligning more closely with natural user behaviors, operational routines, and platform scalability needs.