User Experience Research

Challenge Overview

The UX design and research team were called upon to bring together design and product engineering teams to set the design foundation for the first release of a new task-based developer application within Vantage, the company’s unified product platform that lets customers access all their data wherever it resides.

As most of the product teams had never experienced human-centered design methods before, our UX team hosted a 3-day “User Experience Training Bootcamp“ to model this new way of working, kick off the developer application, and begin to gather initial user data, insights, and ideas from the team to establish the basic design principles.

Team, Roles, and Scope

Before this event, I trained the UX Bootcamp “table coaches,” who were selected from designers, FE developers, and a small external agency. Participants were various stakeholders responsible for creation and delivery of the product.

DAY 1: We conducted listening sessions with participants as part of a change management technique. A simplified research project intake brief was co-created so we had everyone’s buy-in on the goal and deliverable.

DAY 2: I facilitated a full-day, user-centered training workshop, demonstrating user-centered research methods, allowing teams to practice and then try the methods with real users. I educated them on the human-centered mindset and table coaches guided teams through the end-to-end design thinking experience to a solution for their user’s problem.

DAY 3: We brought in our chief executive officers and presented our solutions and roadmapped each team’s milestones and deliverables for the creation of the developer platform to reach our specified launch date.

User-Centered Discovery Research

After a brief tutorial in which I and two designers model the contextual interview process, each team table interviewed a targeted user role enabling them to empathize and understand real user issues. Using “wall worksheets” I designed, teams created a persona, their user’s journey map and storyboard, uncovered gaps and obstacles. Succinct problem definitions and key insights were formed to work on in the ideation phase.

Each group was coached on how to reframe their user’s problem to make it actionable. Then, they were instructed on brainstorming techniques to prepare them to generate ideas.

Techniques used:
Interviewing
Observation
Persona definition
User journey / empathy mapping
Data pattern analysis
Analysis / Synthesis
Problem definition and POV
Actionable insight writing
Group brainstorming techniques

Ideation and Concept Validation

After ideation, each team voted to select their top idea. To develop their concept more fully, I lectured on story arcs and value propositions and conducted a press release writing exercise. Ideas were presented to the users, senior executives, and customer account executives for validation and comments. The user stories and insights were the foundation for rough prototypes, developed in a subsequent workshop, and roadmaps for design sprints later.

Techniques used:
Persona definition
Design Principles
User Stories
Value proposition writing
Storytelling

And later…
Wire frames
Rough prototyping

Post-Workshop Prototype Creation & Testing

I led the research and UX design team in leveraging the design principles to create a first iteration of a prototype. A series of research sprints took place over six months. I oversaw the usability testing methods, writing the learning objectives, guided scripts, testing sessions, and the analysis and synthesis process. After each sprint cycle, we presented the research report to engineering, the strategy team, and product managers.

Techniques used:
Contextual inquiry / Interviewing
Direct Observation
A/B testing
First click test
Tree testing
Data analysis
Synthesis
Actionable insight writing

Our Final Product

The Vantage Developer Platform was launched to the public at our global partners' convention six months after our initial research began. This was the first release under the Vantage product umbrella to be influenced by a full, end-to-end user experience research and design process. The success of this launch was largely due to the users’ voice guiding development decisions and uniting the internal teams through a common vision. It received high praise and rave reviews from our customers and industry experts and lives on today and one of Teradata’s most successful product offerings.