UX Strategy and Product Design for a suite of applications
The goal of this project was to lay the groundwork for a suite of applications that enables all 11,000 agencies to better service customers, grow their business, and perform critical agency tasks.
My Role
Our team consisted of 1 Project manager, 1 UX Architect/Product Designer (Myself), 2 Developers.
Snapshot
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Interviewed over 60 Agency users.
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Surveyed over 700 agencies with a 25% response rate.
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Conducted moderated and unmoderated card sorts with 30 participants.
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Created user journey maps, concept models, and site map for a complex suite of agency applications.
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Conducted design workshops with designers, product owners, and stakeholders.
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Designed, tested, and iterated on high fidelity prototypes following an Agile XP methodology.
What was the problem?
Daily agency operations require the use of numerous applications, and customer information is scattered across 3 to 4 different systems. For the most typical agency workflow, users have to navigate through multiple pieces of software which are disconnected on the backend and unaligned from an experience point of view.
The objective of this project was to understand the day-to-day work of an agency, identify the most crucial tasks and workflows, unify pieces of a fractured ecosystem, and design software that aligns with the users’ mental model.
How did we solve it?
We set out to understand the agency space by conducting several rounds of exploratory user interviews. I synthesized the results with the project team, and we identified major themes, pain points, and the most easily solvable problems to tackle in an MVP.
Researchers had done work previously to create a concept model for agency work. We leveraged that model going forward, and made changes where we saw fit based on our team’s research.
To understand more about the users’ day-to-day work, I conducted a workshop with subject matter experts in order to identify as many tasks as possible. We categorized those tasks into the existing concept model, and surveyed over 700 users to understand which tasks are most crucial to running their business. With a 26% response rate, we identified the most crucial tasks, and used the survey results to inform interviews going forward.
We observed users completing these tasks through remote user-testing, and mapped out experience swim lanes with scenarios, tech and non tech touchpoints, painpoints, and opportunities for design. We converted those pain points into design principles, and used those principles going forward as a guide for the design of our solution.
Throughout this process, I was leveraging the UX Pattern Library to create high fidelity prototypes in Sketch and Invision. I worked with our UX Research team to optimize research and testing in a highly iterative space, and that model is now being implemented across a number of agile products.
What was the result?
The work we did on this project is just the beginning of a major overhaul of the broader agency experience. The project was highly visible within the organization and the prototype that I designed was presented to Executives, Vice Presidents and even the CEO. In addition to that, given that I interviewed over 60 agency users in one-on-one interviews, our research is being leveraged across a number of agency facing products.
What would I do differently?
I would’ve pushed for more discovery time. The project went into development very quickly meaning our already small team had to split it’s time conceptualizing our product and building out the designs.
We did a lot of research on this project - a lot of research I’m very proud of. If I could go back though, I would do the survey differently. I think the findings were useful for us for our immediate need, but I think responses might have varied if we had asked certain questions in a different manner.