Case Studies
At EPAM Systems I worked for three major clients in the fields of finance, hospitality and health care. Below are examples of impacts I accomplished for a major finance client while conducting UX research on enterprise software.
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What's the challenge?
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The product team A had not conducted discovery research previously to assess what gaps and needs in the user experience existed and required solutions.
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Product team B similarly had never had a researcher before and had conducted a few focus groups with engineers, but were building their product solely based on business use cases, rather than based on user feedback. Their pattern was to design and ship new features without conducting research.
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Leadership noted my impacts with research on product team A and assigned me to conduct discovery research with product team B.
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What did I do to remedy that?
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Regarding product team A, I conducted four discovery studies to better understand user needs. I also reviewed existing research materials and partnered with leadership to investigate the history of the product in terms of research and testing with users.
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Concerning product team B, I utilized multiple research methods including discovery research, concept testing and usability testing to gather thorough user feedback to inform the next stages of product-level work. This involved meeting with subject matter experts, the product team, and with the third-party design firm to fully understand: a) what exists in the legacy product, b) feature requirements from a user workflow perspective c) feature requirements from a business and technical perspective, and d) limitations and opportunities in design and development from a design firm perspective (using out of the box solutions).
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My user research articulated user feedback thoroughly to contribute to building a road map for the progression of the product from MVP onwards.
What were the positive impacts?
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My discovery work with product team A resulted in the identification of five new features that needed to be created for users to have a meaningful and satisfactory experience. These features were shipped.
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Aligning to other product streams by attending other UX research and design readouts.
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Delivering early user feedback to the product team through an Excel spreadsheet as soon as interviews were completed.
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Completed four discovery and usability studies for product team A, and five discovery and usability studies for product Team B.
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In the first six months, my work contributed to the shipping of 10 new features for product team A, and five new features for product team B.
Case Study 1: Discovery Research
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What's the challenge?
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The product team had little to zero experience working with a UX researcher. As a result, they were not comfortable or knowledgeable about integrating UX research and design into the product team’s workflow.
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What did I do to remedy that?
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To address these challenges I a) provided a presentation on UX research approaches and methods specific to this project, including stages of planning, timelines, and addressing user feedback; b) led discussions on incorporating UX research and design tasks on the Jira board, tracking UX and UI tasks, and negotiating timelines for research studies to stay ahead of development for each feature; c) leading weekly research update meetings to address questions, plan new research studies on a 3-week cadence, identify new features for research studies, and facilitate content gathering to inform wire frames, user scenarios, and user recruitment lists for each study.
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What were the positive impacts?
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Elevated user requirements to the same level as technical and legal ones.
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I set up a process to help the PO and product team to identify new features for research.
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Ongoing research literacy for the team continues to grow but in terms of gaining importance, consistency and effectiveness, the team is more reliable and proactive in thinking about research in the product cycle.
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Team UX research maturity has gone from level 1 emergent to level 5 integrated (on the NNG UX maturity scale of 1-6).
Case Study 2: UX Evangelism
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What's the challenge?
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Management asked UX researchers to align their methods, processes, and timelines to meet Finance Company research standards and standardize research timelines to meet productivity goals.
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What did I do to remedy that?
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I facilitated meetings amongst research peers to develop solutions to the challenges of aligning and facilitating consensus on our research processes and timelines. Specifically, designing a Mural board to share with leadership which aligned our research processes and timelines to help facilitate consistency in research practices, and a plan for a consistent timeline of research studies on a three-week cadence to better serve 8 product teams.
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What were the positive impacts?
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Set the foundation for researchers to be able to meet features and activities consistently throughout the product life cycle. I’ve created a framework that other people can use, which is more concrete. My Mural board (under artefacts) shows an estimated timeline for the completion of UX research studies concerning our most used UX research methods, including discovery and usability studies.
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While the client explored how to implement this I led by example by following the plan myself. This serves product teams better by having consistency and predictability.
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This plan has helped me to communicate and demonstrate to management that I am meeting my own productivity goals.
Case Study 3: Leading and Facilitating
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What's the challenge?
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Leadership at the Finance Company had chosen Pega as the platform for their new enterprise workflow solution for product team B. The main challenge was that the product team elected to use out-of-the-box solutions to design features for users. These out-of-the-box solutions did not meet all of the user requirements, and created many user pain points.
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As the sole UX researcher working on the project, I worked closely with the product team to choose specific features for usability testing according to business requirements and priorities.
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Up until this point, the workflow tool had been built in Pega through consultation with two subject matter experts, and without consulting additional users.
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My goal as a researcher was to determine whether or not key workflow tasks could be completed intuitively and efficiently in the platform. Secondarily, the business analyst wanted me to learn whether the legacy tool was more efficient, or whether the Pega platform was more efficient for their finance users.
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Conducting research within the Pega platform was time consuming because the customer data had to be loaded into the live platform for each study, which often took longer than working with a prototype.
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Methods
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Task-based usability study with an average of three tasks per study.
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An average of 7-8 users were included in each usability study
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Each study lasted 30 minutes to an hour
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Features were evaluated using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and After Scenario Questionnaire. Workflow specific questions were also included, along with follow-up questions.
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Findings
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Across usability studies, the Pega navigation design failed with our finance users. Extensive clicks fatigued users. Navigation paths were not intuitive, and button terminology--which could not be altered within Pega--confused users.
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In my findings I recommended customizing several features for users, such as navigation, widgets, data organization, and terminology in the platform.
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For the navigation study I ran a comparison study between the two tools, counting the number of clicks for identical tasks in each tool, and the time it took to complete tasks for finance users. Overall, the comparison study showed that users spent an additional 3 minutes per task in Pega.
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The business analyst did not find that Pega was more efficient than the legacy tool.
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This researcher did not find that Pega out-of-the-box solutions were an ideal solution for the workflow software needed for finance users to do their jobs.