Problem
Blind users are using the platform to compare job offers, market rate compensation, and research prospective companies. However at the time, Blind had a very simple and limited tool for salary comparison that did not encompass the complexities of comp packages at most companies. Furthermore, users would ask for compensation information on posts when it’ sometimes irrelevant due a lack of home for compensation and equity tools.
Opportunity
Due to the immense interest around compensation, there was a very direct way to connect the needs of ours users with a more robust compensation / equity comparison tool. This also provided a gateway for us to collect compensation information in a more systematic way; improving the quality and depth of the data we can show.
Research
Conducted 3 rounds of UXR with users of Blind for both the data visualizations as well as the compensation input flows. Generally participants found the data visualization very useful, and would use it to during job search for viewing comparable offers. Participants understood the give-to-get model from the start, and was ok providing their own information first. Similar to other services like Glassdoor and LinkedIn.
Some of the recommended changes and findings we iterated on included clearer message and controls for how users indicate vesting schedules during input flows. Allowing users to break down weighted vested schedules by percentages made a big difference comprehension. We’ve also simplified the page for filtering where all modules are filtered with controls only at the top. There are no filtering controls for specific modules.
Outcome
Designed and shipped the initial total compensation tool within 4 months. Since then we’ve collected 15,000+ salaries from FAANG to startups over a period of 1.5 years. Our users have been not only using the data, but we’ve also publicly shared our data to the rest of the tech community via published infographic / posts for others outside of the platform to see.
The design language from this project was also applied to our core design system. Primarily the overhaul to the 8pt grid that was used along with additional components for filtering controls and data visualization templates.