New additional growth
INTRODUCTION
Before conducting any research, I first identify the key questions that I aim to address. I list all my initial questions, then refine them to focus on key themes.
What does their current process look like?
Are they driven by any regulations?
What would be our differentiator?
What’s their biggest obstacles?
How are other products handling these issues?
Gleaning from the masters.
It was crucial for me to grasp how these programs operate and identify key requirements, what better way than talk with the experts.
Understanding the nonexperts.
Understanding the pain points of individuals tasked with completing this assignment, especially those who are not experts in the field.
Analyzing our competitors.
I wanted to analyzing how other companies were solving these problems and find where our competitive edge could be.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Often has other responsibilities
Regulations that differ depending on industry
Bigger companies have a dedicated role for continuity planning
There is a need to pass down the work
The need to communicate to upper management
Yearly review cycle
More information gathering which causes delays and confusion
Customers that require regulations to be meet by their own customers
Not understanding exactly what needs to be included in a continuity plan
Approval process varied more by industry than expected
Customers needing to have multiple sources of truth for their data
TEAM MEETING
USE CASES
Discovering our use cases
As a user I need a way to effectively communicate to obtain leadership approval and funding for disaster response planning.
CHALLENGES
Providing Flexibility and Ease of Use
It's one thing creating a product with the goal of having the differentiator being ease of use, but balancing that with the need to offer customers the freedom to personalize and customize is a whole different challenge. While working through this challenge clear lines had to be drawn as a product and experience in order for us to keep our differentiator. This took countless hours of research and time talking with trusted partners and customers. In the end I feel like we struck a great balance that provides scalability in the future as well.
Workload
One big challenge that I had to deal with was being the sole designer on a small product team within a smaller company that works fast with multiple projects at the same time. The way that I handled this was one being super organized with my time, files and expectations. Two I like to time box certain parts of the process to allow for quicker iterations as well as it gets feedback into the right hands as quickly as possible. And three I made sure to maintain an open, transparent dialogue with my leader, so I could tap into their expertise and guidance without hesitation.
USABILITY
My Usability Sessions
RESULTS
Key learning. Ensuring guidance throughout the process to obtain precise and reliable data was just as crucial as delivering an easy to use experience
Key learning. Being organized and intentional with my process is a big thing that helped me out in this project. I need to make sure to keep improving and evolving.
Results. We measured the success of this initiative in several meaningful ways. Our strong relationships with customers and partners allowed us to gather firsthand success stories about their experiences with the new flow. Additionally, by leveraging Fullstory, we tracked key performance metrics that we had set. Moreover, our latest Net Promoter Score reflected a notable improvement, further validating the impact of our efforts