Project Details
Product type
SaaS
Role
Duration
August 2023
About the company
Cornerstone OnDemand is a forward-thinking LMS provider that embraces the needs of professional learners with a platform dedicated to supporting companies and individuals seeking to expand their skills and knowledge.
Challenge
Cornerstone’s feedback tool suffered from "feature blindness"; despite its value for professional growth, it was difficult to find and a cumbersome workflow led to widespread user disengagement. Internal teams and clients were bypassing the system entirely, relying on fragmented external workarounds.
Solution
During a 48-hour hackathon, the team worked together to centralize feedback management into a "Feedback Hub." This vision introduced AI-powered request formatting and tied feedback directly to talent-tracking and coaching pathways, making the data actionable for the first time.
The outcome
Although our solution wasn't implemented as a standalone MVP, the prototype did act as a 'North Star' for leadership in charge of Skills. We were able to affect multiple small changes in the system, with a projected user engagement increase from 207 to 400+ users.
Validated the need for an architectural shift in the product
Provided the foundation for several roadmap initiatives for 2024-2026
Compounded on the value of provided feedback by tying it into the talent integration system
Updated the management system to successfully close the feedback loop
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Effective feedback is a cornerstone (😏) of professional development. It fosters open communication and helps managers identify both strengths and areas for growth in their teams. With the right tool, feedback can empower employees to take ownership of their development, while also enabling managers to provide targeted coaching.
In our review of the feedback process, we found that the demand for change was high. Aside from the outdated controls, the feedback request system doesn't convey critical information for users to take action. Without the use of workarounds, such as sticky notes or excel files, they wouldn't be able to track who they attempted to receive feedback for or from. In total, what we found were:
207
170+
48hrs
As our interviews continued, we validated three primary pain points in the existing platform, defining the scope for the subsequent roadmap initiatives:
Issue 1. Feedback tools are hard to find
The options to view and provide feedback are onlyavailable on individual user's profiles. Profiles are not accessible through the main menu, which is a primary navigation point for many users. It is also a tedious process for managers or team leads to request feedback as they would have to navigate to each individual user's profile.
Issue 2. Requests can't be formatted or tracked
Because feedback requests are set up like a profile comment, there is no way to format or use templates for requests. There are also no alerts tied to when a request is submitted, received, or responded to. Any requests sent are overlooked within the system, and users have to prompt recipients through external channels.
Issue 3.
Feedback and requests merge with user's activity feed
User activity is tracked and automatically populated on their profiles. This makes it difficult to track any requests or responses received since there is no clear indicator tied to them.
By identifying these key problem areas, we were able to improve our redesign by building on Cornerstone’s latest internal features.
We defined a solution that leverages the internal AI system to minimize redundant tasks and create more meaningful feedback requests. In addition, the results of the provided feedback should tie in with the talent-tracking platform to connect users with personalized coaching, mentoring and up-skilling opportunities. Finally, the last goal is to enhance the overall feedback loop by improving visibility to easily track the status of requests.
Feedback request hub
Updated steps to request feedback
Before: Silent delivery and a lack of notifications meant requests were frequently missed or ignored unless the sender sent a manual "nudge."
After: Improve the feedback request page by tracking received and sent requests and include the ability to send reminders to users. We're now successfully able to close the loop without the extra legwork.
Next steps: With anticipated user increase, we want to ensure that the information shared from feedback stays actionable. With the system's AI tool, we plan to provide targeted summaries that allow users to easily see their strengths and improvement areas.
Before and after feedback request for skills (2025)
Before: Users were confused about the type of request they were asking. Feedback types and descriptions were set by admins, and it could be an overwhelming experience trying to understand what each feedback type allowed.
After: Feedback requests are simplified to clearly reflect the three types available without relying on additional information. During testing, users felt more confident and increased their submission speed by 12%.
Before and after template setup (launch 2026)
Before: The extensive customization options led to inconsistent labels within the system and made it unclear where feedback requests existed.
After: Simplifying the wizard to one page helps reduce confusion for admins and end users alike.
Opportunity: Templates only support descriptive text. In the future, providing a rich text editor would allow users to format and emphasize instructions in requests.
Request successfully submitted
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