6 Week Pilot
In digital transformation, you often face the problem of not knowing how and when to shut down the legacy system with a replacement in fear of disdain from the users. In this case, we were dealing with a tool that has been around for over 20 years and is deeply ingrained into many users' daily tasks. The stakeholders’ actually had a replacement tool already built and available to users. But of course, they were uninterested and no one could understand why. We conducted a user research project to understand why users’ liked or disliked this replacement product.
I presented to stakeholders that this product could be a suitable solution as a replacement tool. I proposed that we select a small department that would need to participate in a user pilot only using this software for 6 weeks.
NN Group on Pilots:
Pilot testing involves conducting one or two test sessions to evaluate the design of a usability study. It checks for any issues before the actual testing phase, leading to more reliable results.
We launched when the users were ready to participate in said pilot. I offered resources to the users to help them with this transition. For example, I put together a side by side comparison of the old and new functionality on the same work task for quick reference.
We called this the user “cheat sheet” and it was around 20 pages. I also set up a chat channel with the users were they could ask me questions at any point, as well as the new products' tech support for any questions of that nature. I also set up weekly check ins with the users to see how they were feeling with the transition, as well as learning hours with the product owner who graciously donated an hour of his time to them every other week.
This project required advanced user research skills. I needed to make sure the users felt comfortable and supported for them to willingly work with me for this extended period of time. I also needed to study their responses to my weekly questions to see how they really felt about this replacement so I could accurately share this with my stakeholders.
Although there was pressure from the stakeholders’ to get a positive reaction to the product, I had to portray an accurate perspective of how things went for the users. Luckily, I had fantastic results from the pilot that impressed stakeholders. A huge element of this was making sure education was in the forefront of the research project. I proved the hypothesis that transition is possible with 1:1 support for specific questions and references.
Feeback I received from these projects:
I love how the team is improving the experience and capabilities for our Merch partners. Major unlock for the business. Big thank you to the MX team!" - Group VP
Great to see all the amazing things coming from the MX Core!" - VP Engineering
"An Exciting first step that is leading to SO much opportunity!! The collaboration and thoughtfulness from this team is incredible!" - Group Design Manager
"The team has done a great job collaborating with out counterparts and will be a game-changer." - Senior Product Manager
THOUGHTWORKS/CLIENT CASE STUDY
About: Thoughtworks is a publicly owned, global technology company with 49 offices in 18 countries. It provides software design and delivery, and tools and consulting services.
Note: NDA keeps me from sharing screens from my clients.
At Thoughtworks, I was hired as an Senior Experience Designer that would act as a premium technology consultant for large Fortune 500 clients. My first client extended my contract twice, so it became the focus of my time at Thoughtworks. In this role, I was the Lead Designer embedded on the client’s Merchandising team, where I focused on legacy system transformation, user research, product vision, and business driven design choices.
I also oversaw their Microsoft Power Bi Component library. I developed over a dozen components which were consumed by designers & developers across the company. We measured associate productivity gains when consuming the component and found an estimated $10k saved per use of each component.
My team’s focus was to find areas of improvement for Merchandisers* that could also be used by the entire technology team. In the last year, I successfully created a new product/system, ran a user pilot with 100% conversion rate, and created a long term design strategy and vision that the company can use in the future.
*Merchandisers were my primary user base. These users plan, order, and make deals with vendors to put products on store shelves at a reasonable price.
I will highlight some of these projects and accomplishments below. But if you are short of time, here is some feedback I received in this role:
Dominique has been with this team for little over a quarter now and has been a design thinking leader in the team. She has led all necessary visual design requirements the team has for the functional work. Has been available for clarifications and provided feedback on the work. All of these in a timely and clear manner.
A larger impact on client has been Dominique's hard work around user research. She has been consistently driving user research on the topics of Merchandising dashboard, Category Management timeline, Report Hub and production transition pilot. The last two have been major efforts, game-changers for the client. They involve problem discovery and change management. She has been actively engaging the Product Managers in Problem definition and shaping the solution. She has also been actively driving the change management exercise with the users, pain staking understanding the users, addressing their concerns and establising comfort with the new solution.
Her communication is excellent. She is well appreciated and respected by her team, peers and superiors at the client account.
-My Product Manager
I met and got to know Dominique at the on-site in January and was also her performance partner. I was able to learn more about her role and her project through a series of conversations.
Over the course of her time at the client, Dominique has delivered on a solution for ____ that was recently released to all users. She kept empathy at the forefront - deepening her understanding of the merchandising users through multiple rounds of research and testing. She pushed for concept testing early on to validate their solutions early on.
Previously, Dominique had experiences where product managers handed down requirements, but with this project she was able to collaborate with them and has upskilled on her analytical skills. She enjoys analyzing problems and making connections to opportunities, especially as her knowledge of the ecosystem grows.
Additionally, she thought about user adoption from the start and holistically, taking into consideration the users' goals and long-term implications for the future. She worked closely with the user, making sure to collect feedback at every touchpoint and communicating to them the benefits of the tool to aid the transition from legacy to the new tool.
As she did so, she made connections between stakeholders and users, helping facilitate conversations between end-users and various teams that were indirectly involved with the technologies they were using. All of the above helped increase awareness and smoother user adoption of the new solutions.
Finally, thanks to all the user sessions and workshops she ran, Dominique has improved her facilitation skills. Now, she can seamlessly coordinate users and stakeholders, as well as feel more comfortable facilitating important, complex conversations.
-Experience Design Peer
Dominique is very passionate and dedicated towards her responsibility. She always delivered great quality work and was always ready to listen to our queries/doubts whenever we reached out with queries/suggestions. She usually gets back to us in a very short span of time.
Her communication and presentation skill is really great and appreciated by all stakeholders several times (client as well as TW)
She did a great job in all XD related work for the Report Hub module and we got huge appreciation for wrapping up report hub in a quicker time. It was really nice working with Dominique and hoping to work again in future. Wish her all the best and hope our path will cross again.
- Development Team
Design Case Studies
