Dashboard Design for Entire Corporation
A difficult factor of working for a large corporation is that technology transitions can often move at a slower pace. As a consultant, this was a good opportunity to take what I learned from surveying the environment I was working in and offer a conceptual solution.
When I arrived to the company I immediately set up a user research project with the users to learn about what they would and would not want in the Hub (something like a “homepage” “dashboard” “control center” experience) . I took what I learned from this user research and used it in a long term project that would be presented conceptually to my stakeholders towards the end of my contract.
As I knew in my short term stay at the client this product could not be developed / implemented, it was important to convey the vision so that the team could start working towards this vision in the next few years. This presentation was met with high praise from the senior product owners and stakeholders and is currently in phase one discovery, with many designers from different teams sharing further ideas and research plans.
A text sample from my final presentation
In Conclusion
In my time at Thoughtworks, I gained a lot of new skills and made my core foundation stronger. Largest of which would be how to learn from large research projects with the userbase to inspire new products that serve them and therefore the company. I also became an expert in change management and digital transformation
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
new website:
dominiquegrogandesign.com
Design Case Studies
