From Chaos to Clarity: Reimagining Aha!’s feature prioritization workflow
A UX redesign that rescued product managers from daily overwhelm and turned Aha! into a feature prioritization powerhouse
Product managers struggled with Aha!'s cluttered and rigid interface, reporting significant time waste during the critical feature ideation and prioritization phases. Through user research and iterative design, we identified key pain points and redesigned the interface to reduce cognitive load. The redesigned interface cuts through the clutter with an automated feature prioritization system and collaborative feedback. The result? Product managers can now navigate from feature ideation to roadmap decisions with clarity and confidence, transforming a once arduous process into a streamlined experience.
Timeline:
I worked with a team of four to design this app for an class project over the course of two and a half months. We contacted professional stakeholders to assess user needs, and ended up working with two product managers that used Aha! product management software.
Background
For this class project, our team was tasked with identifying professional stakeholders and redesigning or extending a software/ tool they use. Initially, we interviewed a variety of different professionals, from healthcare workers to college student employees. Ultimately, however, we focused on product managers, as our two stakeholders had specific pain points regarding a software they use, Aha!. Aha! is a widely-used product management platform that helps product managers organize, evaluate, and prioritize product features. However, our stakeholders mentioned several usability challenges that impact their productivity and efficiency, particularly regarding the feature ideation phase. Our goal was to redesign a part of Aha! to improve its functionality and enhance the overall user experience.
The Problem
Product managers must organize, evaluate, and prioritize between hundreds of feature ideas, but struggle to integrate feedback across multiple people, creating inefficiencies when prioritizing features and hindering their ability to collaborate effectively.
The User
Product managers and other professionals who create new feature ideas and decide which ones to move forward with.
Solution Preview
We redesigned Aha!’s features page so that users can give feedback on different feature ideas, and can easily see which features are highly agreed upon. This allows our users to spend less time sifting through features on Aha!’s rigid interface, and more efficiently make important product decisions.
User Research
We conducted interviews with two product managers who regularly use Aha! in their workflow. The interviews were conducted over Zoom, incorporating contextual inquiry methods. We aimed to:
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Understand the daily workflow of product managers.
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Identify specific pain points and challenges with Aha!
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Gather insights into what improvements would make the platform more effective.
Both stakeholders walked us through how they use Aha! and also showed us how they do certain basic tasks.
Pain Points
Our findings highlighted that while using Aha!, product managers often struggled with:
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Overwhelming Interfaces: Aha! has too many information fields and input areas, and there is a lack of clear visual hierarchy.
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“It’s too complex! It’s like using a big hammer to kill a small ant."
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Navigation Issues: Stakeholders had difficulty comparing feature ideas side-by-side or organizing them meaningfully.
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"Depending on the release, there can be up to 100 features."
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Terminology Barriers: Aha! uses ambiguous terms that create a steeper learning curve and slows productivity.
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“You’d need outside training to understand the terms; it assumes you already know all the app specific vocab, which is unhelpful for new users"
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Affinity Mapping to identify pain points from stakeholder interviews
User Personas
Our two user personas represent someone just starting out in their career as a product manager, getting used to the work environment and tasks, as well as someone more experienced, who is confident in their role but has frustrations with their workflow.
Competitive Audit (existing product management apps)
We did a competitive audit of four different systems/softwares that product managers might also use. We chose Productboard, Jira, and Asana, as they are other project management systems that are commonly used for managing product/project teams. They have some similar features and interfaces to Aha! that we took into consideration when creating our Aha! redesign.
Excel was also mentioned in our stakeholder interviews as a tool they often use.
"Excel tools should be the standard."
Because both stakeholders expressed wanting a simpler and more intuitive/familiar interface like Excel’s, we also wanted to analyze Excel’s strengths and weaknesses in comparison to Aha!.
From the competitive audit, we can see that many of the tools used by Product Managers aren’t designed specifically for them. The only one that offers high-level features tailored specifically for product management is Aha! It is also important to note that among the competitors, many aren’t able to have a high degree of customizability without trading off ease of use (as seen with Aha! and Jira). Thus, we used Excel as inspiration to maintain a high degree of customization and while retaining ease of use. In our redesign, we wanted to add this level of customization, while also maintaining ease of use and collaboration.
The First Ideation
We noticed that both stakeholder’s main pains points and frustrations revolved around the features section of Aha!. Therefore, we decided to narrow the scope of our redesign and focus on addressing this page. We created two new user flows, centered around different tasks that product managers might have in regards to features of a product.
The first user flow demonstrates tasks relating managing features -- creating or browsing features and changing information fields.
The second user flow demonstrates the task of evaluating features -- using the list view to search, filter, and move features.
Create Feature
The original feature creation page on Aha! allowed for a limited amount of input and customization; not all options are available for input on the initial pop-up. Users need to create a feature then navigate to another interface to add more input. This adds unnecessary steps, which can get frustrating for users who want to add information for a new feature all in one go.
We redesigned Aha!’s feature creation page to allow users to input more information initially.
Features List
On Aha!, the search function and drag-and-drop feature that exists on the Features Board does not exist on the List Report. This could potentially confuse users who may expect similar functions as to the “Features Board” interface.
In Aha!'s board view, users can drag and drop features, easily changing a feature's positions or release.
Conversely, features are only viewable in a list if the user generates a "list report," which is not editable.
We redesigned the list report to just be an editable list view of the features. In the new list view, users can:
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Search: Rather than scrolling through a long list of features, the new search feature enables users to quickly find and evaluate features.
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Drag and Drop: Users can easily organize and prioritize features by dragging and dropping them within the interface.
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Edit-in-Line: Users can quickly and easily edit information fields in-line from the list view instead of having to open the feature page each time.
Search
Drag and Drop
Edit In-Line: Change feature name, tags, etc.
User Testing
We showed our low-fidelity wireframes to our stakeholders at this stage. They gave us some feedback on our existing design:
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In-line editing is helpful and makes the stakeholders' workflow more efficient.
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Feature ideation is quick; the New Feature page doesn't need a lot of information fields.
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"I usually wouldn’t have that information in the beginning– not during the creation phase. I would expect it to be done later when I have more information. At this point, I am trying to get it on the board."
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The menu side bar takes up too much space; most of the space on the screen should be dedicated to viewing the features.
They also provided further insights about what we could add to the design that would be more helpful for their workflow:
- Flexibility: The list view offers better organization, but is still too rigid for feature ideation. Stakeholders need a way to see things in multiple dimensions.
- "If you have a deck of cards and those represent features, you're giving me the ability to sort the deck of cards by the suit or by number, but usually that's not how I'm trying to work. I need to see all the cards and the numbers are sort of meaningless."
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Integrated Feedback and Automatic Sorting: Because they find Aha! inefficient, stakeholders use Excel to prioritize features and compare feedback; however, this is still time-consuming. They want a feature on Aha! that allows them to automatically integrate multiple users' feedback and easily see "hot features."
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"One person cherry picked their top fifteen ideas, one person categorized features by theme, and I went through the feature s and gave each one a rating based on multiple criteria."
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We learned that this set of wireframes solved some smaller issues with Aha!’s interface, but they didn’t address the most pressing, underlying issues pertaining to the way product managers evaluate of feature ideas. This includes making feature ideas easily visible (at a large scale), grouping features, and streamlining the process of viewing other PMs' opinions.
Point of view statement
At this stage, we wrote a point of view statement that encapsulated our stakeholders thoughts and needs.
Our product manager stakeholders need a completely different view on Aha! that integrates multiple users’ feedback and allows them to see numerous features at once because they need more flexibility and efficiency when ranking features during the ideation phase.
Based on this feedback, we reiterated on our design, focusing on flexible grouping and systems that support feedback/commenting from multiple users to address these issues. The new flow integrates multiple users’ feedback and automatically sorts features, allowing users to see which features are more popular among colleagues/team members.
The Second Ideation
After reflecting on the stakeholders' feedback from user testing, we came up with a new design that included a few main features:
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Basic Feature Creation: Keep the new feature page similar to Aha!'s original design, with limited information fields to support quick ideation.
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Rating Features: On the features page, users can leave ratings and comments; this feedback is integrated by the system.
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Ideas Board: A collaborative brainstorming whiteboard where users can group and rank features; this feedback is also integrated by the system.
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Hot Features Page: A view of the features page that uses user ratings and feedback to create a ranking. "Hot" features are automatically displayed near the top of the page so users can see them easily.
Initial Thoughts/Ideation
New User Flow: Creating, Browsing, and Voting on Features
Revert to Aha!'s existing feature creation screen; keep it simple for initial feature creation
Have the option to add further details later on the full features page
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On the features page, users can assign features a theme, rate them, and suggest certain criteria they may be good for
"Hot Features" are grouped by initiative and auto-sorted based on user feedback; users can easily see the "hottest" feature ideas at the top
Ideas Board: collaborative brainstorming whiteboard where users can group and rank features; they can also add comments and post-it notes
New Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Hot Features are grouped by initiative; most popular ("hot") features are at the top
Features page is less cluttered than Aha!'s original design, but maintains multiple information fields (with the option to add more). Feedback section for users to give ratings and comments.
Ideas Board: users can create groups (ranked or unranked) by dragging and dropping features cards
Ideas Board also has the option to add comments and post-it notes.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
For two screens (hot features and features page) we created two alternate versions and later got stakeholder feedback about which they preferred.
Hot Features Page (grouped by initiative, list view)
Alternate Hot Features Page (grouped by initiative, board view)
Features Page with Overview and Feedback
Alternate Features Page (two column view)
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Ideas Board: Drag and Drop Features Into Groups, Comment, Post-It Notes
Second Round of User Testing
For the second round of user testing, we interviewed our first stakeholder as well as a new stakeholder. The new stakeholder is also a product manager, but she works at a different company and doesn't actually use Aha! at work. However, her feedback was still valuable, as she also has to prioritize features for her job. She also provided a slightly different perspective compared to our other stakeholders and provided new suggestions for additions and improvements.
This second version of our redesign was much more successful than our first attempt; stakeholders liked a lot of our screens. However, not all of our designs strongly resonated with our stakeholders; in particular, the ideas board, a collaborative brainstorming space. The stakeholders also provided some recommendations regarding some features to add or change:
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Hot Features Page: Both stakeholders liked it and preferred the list view to the board view.
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Recommended adding a carousel view so users can quickly go through many features.
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Features Page: Both stakeholders liked it and preferred the two column view.
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Each feature should have an owner; second stakeholder recommended having a "reporter" and "assignee."
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Recommended adding a few fields, including customer information.
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Priority of feature should be based on a few factors, including reporter's suggested priority, ratings & feedback, and customer (i.e. is it a high-priority, high-paying customer?).
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Ideas Board: Both stakeholders disliked it, finding it confusing and unnecessary, as we already included a feedback section on the main feature page.
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“It's not so much grouping and ranking them. People may have different ideas of rankings/ratings. Therefore, when you come together, what they try to do is combine everyone's ratings together and find agreement. You need to define those and see where they align.”
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Final Design
Hot Features Page: grouped by agreement (i.e. features most users rated highly, features most users rated lowly, features with mixed reviews)
New Feature Creation with suggested priority
Feature Page (Carousel): users can quickly go through multiple features
Expanded Features Page with description, overview, and feedback
Reflection
I think this project was a great learning experience; it was my first time actually working with professional stakeholders and getting feedback from them, and this project ended up going through several ideations, which was an interesting learning experience. I really enjoyed working with the stakeholders; it made all of our design decisions feel more justified, and we were able to get feedback from them about what worked and what didn't. In the past, the projects I have done have been much more new and hypothetical, and I didn't get this kind of concrete feedback.
Ideally, I would have liked to have had more time; the fact that this was a class project meant we only had 10 weeks to finish and we also had pretty tight deadlines for each stage. For example, when we finished our first round of user testing and realized we had to create a completely new design, we actually had high-fidelity wireframes due the next week, so we had to fit new ideation, sketches, flows, low- and high-fidelity wireframes into a single week.
I still think that we were able to create a satisfactory redesign that is helpful for our stakeholders, and hopefully for product managers in general. Another thing I would have liked to have done, if we had less time constraints, is to interview a wider range of stakeholders. For our second round of user testing we interviewed a new product manager stakeholder who worked at a different company than our first two stakeholders. She gave us some feedback about things to add or change on our screens that was different to what our previous stakeholders mentioned. This alternate perspective was valuable in creating a redesign that would be beneficial to the greatest number of user. By interviewing more stakeholders across companies and industries, we could get an even better holistic overview of user needs when it comes to a software like Aha!.