Transforming Organizational Consulting with a 360-degree Feedforward and Employee Evaluation Platform

Bringing empathy to the rigid feedback process

According to Jester, enterprise companies often lack a strong feedback culture. There are two main issues in the traditional system:

There are no suggestions for improvement. The feedback mostly points out what employees did wrong without offering ways to get better.

Rare evaluations. Managers evaluate employee performance at mid-year meetings, which is not enough for improving productivity.

Jester decided to build a digital platform that would promote a more efficient way to evaluate employees – feedforward. As a new concept, feedforward focuses more on employees' growth rather than on their past mistakes, helping them achieve better results in the future.

As a consulting company, Jester doesn't have a technical team so they contacted Modeso to build the feedforward SaaS platform for their clients. Discover how we helped them implement their vision from idea to release.

Design came first

Usually, we start each project by defining the product concept and identifying the key features to implement first. However, with Jester, we initially focused on the design. Why? Because the platform was intended for users of all ages and technical skills, we aimed to make it user-friendly and closely aligned with our client's vision.

This approach did introduce challenges, as we had to adjust the design later when adding new features. From this experience, we learned that it's better to start with the functional specifications before diving into the design. This practice has later become a crucial part of our process to ensure that both functionality and design align seamlessly from the outset.

Here is a short overview of the main stages of the project:

Alignment workshops

Our team conducted several alignment workshops with the client to delve into their product vision and needs.

UI/UX design

Once we understood how the client sees the future platform, we moved into the UI/UX design stage, discussing various concepts and prototypes to create an intuitive user interface.

Technical specification

We designed the software architecture and created a technical specification, then proceeded with implementation.

Implementation

After finalizing the design, we started the implementation process, conducting weekly demo meetings with the client to ensure the platform worked properly.

User acceptance testing (UAT)

Once the client tested the platform internally, we gathered their feedback and made necessary adjustments.

Final adjustments and go-live

After final refinements and testing, we released the platform, ensuring it successfully went live.

Solution overview

Paying particular attention to the UI/UX design, we managed to make the platform as user-friendly as possible. Let’s take a look at some key features.

Sharing feedback

As Jester wanted to create an intuitive and empathy-driven process of evaluating employees’ skills and values, we implemented a feedback feature that focuses on helping team members grow. Based on company-wide values and role-specific skills, the platform allows employees to give and request well-targeted feedforwards on each aspect.

Here are the main steps of how users can leave feedback.

Step 1: Select a person to give feedback to

The platform shows the entire list of employees with their names and profile pictures to facilitate the choice.

Step 1

Step 2: Specify what skills and values will be evaluated

The user can evaluate specific skills such as management and communication, or estimate values like patience and flexibility.

Step 2

Step 3: Leave a score

To create a psychologically safe environment, we didn’t add any numbers to the evaluation. Instead, we made the scale go from a big opportunity for improvement to a big praise for the work done.

Step 3

Step 4: Review and edit feedback

After the feedback is sent, the user can review and edit it if needed.

Step 4

Users can ask for feedback from their coworkers by selecting a specific skill or value they want to be evaluated and sending a feedback request.

We implemented several extra features to ensure the best possible experience for users.

Writing notes

As an additional feature, managers can write notes for their employees during annual evaluation meetings to sum up their achievements and overall productivity.
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Setting goals

Based on the evaluation process, the manager sets goals for employees to help them improve specific skills or values. Each goal features a name, description, and a due date to help employees achieve their objectives during a chosen timeframe.

Tracking the team's growth

After Jester’s team tested the solution, they realized that the platform’s functionality could be enhanced to help enterprises monitor their team's growth.

In large enterprises with hundreds of employees and multiple teams, it becomes challenging for managers to monitor each team member's performance and maintain records of their progress.

To help enterprises gain a holistic view of each employee and team, we enhanced the platform with detailed dashboards and a performance matrix where managers can see the changes in the skills and values of each employee over time. These dashboards get updated with new data every time a team member gets feedback and achieves a set goal.

This feature allowed us to broaden the initial concept of a 360-degree feedforward platform and help companies holistically track the growth of their employees.

Customizing the user interface

Since the platform was designed as a SaaS product, we implemented a customization option to allow companies to adjust the UI design to reflect their corporate style, ensuring the platform aligns with their brand identity.

On the dashboard, a manager can view the progress of the entire team and specific employees over a chosen timeframe.

Lesson learned: refining our approach to software product development

Building the platform for Jester was a transformative experience for Modeso. During the project, we introduced a modern and easily scalable serverless infrastructure architecture, establishing the optimal tech stack for building such products.
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From selecting libraries to setting up a cloud infrastructure, we laid out flexible guidelines and principles – some kind of a starter kit – that allowed us to deliver the project faster.
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We successfully apply this starter kit to other projects as well.

Result: Productized consulting services

By developing the 360-degree feedforward platform, Jester expanded and productized their consulting services. The SaaS platform we built for them allowed Jester to solve the problem of inefficient employee feedback culture, transforming the way enterprise companies approach employee evaluation.
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Now employees can instantly evaluate each other’s performance in an empathy-driven way, set goals based on received feedback, and companies can monitor the progress of the entire team.
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We keep working with Jester to create digital products that help companies become more modern, empathetic, and connected.

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Productizing Organizational Consulting Services with a 360-degree Feedforward and Employee Evaluation Platform

Bringing empathy to the rigid feedback process

Design came first

Solution overview

Sharing feedback

Writing notes

Setting goals

Tracking the team's growth

Customizing the user interface

Lesson learned: refining our approach to software product development

Result: Productized consulting services

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