Hey there, I'm Malia!
Senior UX Researcher with multi-disciplinary experiences in tech, non-profits, and learning experiences.
Report Automation: Generative Research & Experience Requirements
As Lead UX Researcher, I developed and built relationships with stakeholders that enabled research activities which resulted in generative research, supporting data for business cases, and contributions to development roadmaps.
Impacts of UX Research
- Generative research with various groups of customers and employees on reporting needs
- Experience Requirements seamlessly integrated into development roadmap
- Benchmark study to track changes and progress over time
- Re-analysis of existing data to support business case and prevent duplication of efforts
- Design workshop that aligned stakeholders and multiple goals and objectives
Project Details
Role
Lead UX Researcher
Stakeholders
- Project manager
- Automation team
- Developer team
- Customer Success team
- UX Designer
- Project sponsors
Project Length
- Over a year
- On-going
Deliverables
- Program & research plans
- Project timeline & goals
- Generative research report & recommendations
- Usability findings & recommendations
- Supporting data for business case
- Experience Requirements
- Benchmark data
Process
I was brought onto this project after a survey was sent out to collect data. However, due to several errors in how the questions were framed, stakeholders did not use how to utilize the data. I developed rapport with the stakeholders by re-analyzing the data and providing additional insights on the data. This opened the doors with stakeholders to conducting more customer research.
Developed a research program plan that detailed the various UX research activities to be done, along with goals, objectives, methodology, hypotheses, and session scripts.
Facilitated a design workshop with all stakeholders to ensure align on all goals and objectives for the automation report. This also included planning a timeline for when various activities will be held, or when certain tasks had to be accomplished.
Recruited customers and account managers (employees) to participate in one-on-one generative research sessions.
Participants included customers from various spend tiers and government-affiliated organizations.
Conducted hour-long remote usability sessions with customers and employees, utilizing the mockups created as sample outputs from the report automation process.
Sessions were tailored according to the participant’s industry.
Analyzed data collected for themes and common findings.
All reports were peer reviewed by other Research team members.
Updates on research activities and early findings were also presented during weekly meetings.
When data was fully analyzed, findings and recommendations were presented to all stakeholders.
When results were presented, stakeholders agreed with the findings and recommendations. However, they still struggled with knowing how to implement the usability recommendations into their roadmap.
They asked for the recommendations to be presented as requirements, which proved to be the missing link allowed usability findings to be successfully adopted and integrated with the project’s development roadmap.
Customer and employees were interviewed to uncover needs for regular reports and reporting tool
Stakeholders knew that monthly reports were important in developing and maintaining relationships with customers. However, they could not articulate why a report is even necessary, and why customers don’t seem satisfied with the content currently available in reports. The lack of answers meant that it was necessary to conduct generative research to fill in the gaps.
Customers from multiple tiers and industries were recruited for 1-hour interview sessions, along with several of their account managers. These sessions were designed to uncover why these reports are necessary and how they can be more relevant to customers’ responsibilities. During interviews with account managers, specific pain points in the report creation process were also documented and integrated with recommendations on what a report creation tool must enable.
Key findings that were uncovered included:
- Customers could only allocate a few minutes to read these reports
- Customers found current reports too detailed and difficult to digest easily and quickly
- Customers felt that too much marketing information was placed at the beginning of the report, hiding critical content that should be placed higher up the report
- Account managers do not have access to all information required to create their reports, forcing them to communicate with multiple different teams to get the data needed and delaying the report creation.
Despite agreeing with the results of the generative research and suggested recommendations, developers still struggled with knowing exactly how to implement these new insights. As a result, Experience Requirements were suggested as a way to bridge the gap between the usability findings and technical requirements.
Customer needs were converted into system requirements per the guidelines described by Ivy Hooks in 1993. A sample of these Experience Requirements compared to its original recommendations are as follows:
- Original Recommendation: Customers need to see patching information for their devices
- Experience Requirement: Customers shall be able to view a log that lists all their devices, the version of the devices' current patch, installation date of the current patches, upcoming patches, date for patch update installation and alerts on failed patch installation
Previously, developers had to interpret recommendations for improved experiences into defined tasks that could be integrated into their work by themselves. This process is challenging for individuals unfamiliar with user experience. As a result, UX recommendations would either get clumsily adopted or ignored altogether.
With Experience Requirements, I undertook the effort of breaking down UX recommendations into defined requirements. This meant that there was a more accurate understanding of how to integrate user research recommendations, and a swifter adoption of these recommendations. The Requirements removed uncertainty on what needed to be done, provided confidence for all stakeholders on next steps, and also guided more accurate allocations of resources dedicated to this effort.
To date, the Experience Requirements are actively being used to guide the efforts related to improving and automating the monthly report.
These case studies represents only a small fraction of my work.