Tools used:
Mural, Axure, Sketch, InVision & Design System Manager, Illustrator, Pen & Paper
Description:
Jet Global has some initiatives to build a budgeting product that fit nicely into their web portal that their customers used to build and share financial reports. I was hired in late 2016 as the UX Manager to start on this initiative. My contributions consisted of building a top-talent design team, business model canvas, research, field research, experience mapping, personas, information architecture, usability studies, prototyping, UI design and validation. This project took about two years to launch.
Defining the Business Model
I worked closely with executive staff and the VP of Product and the VP of Engineering to create a business model canvas. The objective was to fully understand the value proposition and revenue stream. I conducted a workshop with leadership to define the elements in the business model. Below is an example of the output of this workshop.
Personas and Initial Experience Map
I hired a research and we both started conducting research to understand the Budgeting software market and the pain points users have during their budgeting process. I had my research be the lead on research activities and we conducted in-person interviews at customer sites and over the phone. We reached out to customers that expressed interest in Jet creating a budgeting product as well. I had my UX Analyst perform market research and competitive analysis so we could understand the landscape. This drove the creation of personas. We were able to highlight the pain points these budgeters had during their budgeting work flow. This allowed us to narrow down the scope of what we would be building. Ultimately, we found that collaboration was the most understated under developed feature in most budgeting software. We knew we couldn’t compete feature-to-feature with the bigger budget software companies, so we put a lot of emphasis and effort into the automation and collaboration of the work flow.
Prototyping
Now we had our personas, their pain points, and the direction we wanted to go to build the software. I started creating user scenarios and information hierarchy in Axure and tested them with users. The feedback we received about what we thought was the correct flow was eye-opening to learn that we didn't quite understand how our budgeting users were going to operate. They pointed out things like, "The terms you are using don't make sense to me and my normal flow," and "I don't understand the difference between a budgeting collaborator and budget owner." Armed with this type of feedback, we were able to keep our personas updated, make adjustments in terminology and build a more intuitive workflow.
Below you will see some examples of how we mocked an excel type looking screen in a web portal frame. This wasn't just a Google Sheet, this was going to be a connected, collaborative and interactive experience. It was going to allow our users to harness the power of Jet Reports financial reporting engine with a budgeting workflow and interface that was easily accessible on the web.
Design System
I worked closely with my lead visual designer over a six month period creating a design system that housed components, behaviors and interactions. I also worked very closely with the VP of product playing a mini Product Owner. We did not have dedicated product people for our teams. The VP of product would write the stories and I would massage the acceptance criteria. I would make sure the stories were behavioral written instead of focused on UI with rigid requirements. I would use the design system we built to talk about the interactions, UI controls and components. The comps attached to the stories would show the different views, but the design system would call out the UI and interactions.
Implementation & User Validation
I embeded my lead visual designer onto the web team that was in charge of implementing the budget product into our web portal. I instructed my researcher to conduct quick validation with internal users and a few of our external users to validate our assumptions.
Budgeting Preview and Launch
I had the research team take the usability participants and select a few companies to be a part of a Budget Preview. This allowed us to have an extended beta period to iron out issues before we launched.
My team and I were a huge part of successfully launching the Budgeting product in October of 2018. With our marketing efforts in place, and the sales people doing what they do, we gained 120 new paying customer by the end of 2018.
UI Updates Based on Validation
Based on validation, I had the lead visual designer fix the usability issues and design a new look that ultimately resonated with our users better. Here are some examples of that UI that was updated and ultimately released when the product launched.
