Russell Webb Design

Category: +ROI of Design

Designed for product owners, executives, and decision-makers, this content translates complex UX principles into tangible business outcomes. From frameworks for prioritising features to guidance on integrating UX into the broader product roadmap.

  • Using proto-personas to Know your user – Pt I

    Using proto-personas to Know your user – Pt I

    Execute a Content Audit using proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. Consolidate personas, communicate findings, to achieve a deeper understanding of all users.
    Empower UX to move forward with experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.

    Contents

    Please note; for client confidentiality sensitive parts of all imagery has been pixelated. All work is copyright ©RussellWebbDesign 2024

    Hard Skills:

    Design Process

    Service Blueprint

    Proto-Personas

    Soft Skills:

    Service Design

    Journey Mapping

    Customer Experience Design

    Full List →

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.

    Limited Data, Maximum Impact

    Delivering with resource constraints and tight timeline, this Content Audit / Inventory Battle Plan leverages the power of proto-personas as the primary intel.

    Gather the troops

    Assemble all content audit data

    Regulated design environments are often constrained – it is important to offer agility and be resourceful. This level of Service Design would benefit from ;

    • Customer surveys
    • Stakeholder interviews
    • Analytics (rationalised down into meaningful chunks)

    …and additional data. For this UX project the starting point was an extended collection of unverified proto-personas. These were then rationalised in to bucketed or grouped personas.

    Navigating the complexity of proto-personas

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Proto-personas: Adaptability in the face of organisational inertia and provide clarity to maintain stakeholder engagement.

    Adapt UX to audience and personas

    Larger organisations, often new agile methodologies, may still be in the early stages of embracing lean UX, so adapt your approach to your audience is a key skill.

    When personas are agreed and validated as the only ‘source of truth’ – there also must be alignment that these refine and adapt personas over time, ensuring that they remain relevant.

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Overly detailed personas can dilute effectiveness, especially for large organisations. This task focused on consolidating personas for greater clarity.

    Focussed personas work well. Larger organisations multiply these audience types and their impact is reduced. This task looked at grouping and sorting by commonalities

    Conduct extensive desk research to develop a deep understanding

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Embark on a deep dive of user research to become the brand’s go-to expert on your target audience.

    Absorb insights

    Take the time to listen and absorb – Become the brand’s knowledge hub.

    Absorbing insights and data is vital. Time spent at this stage of your research is key for informing a future IA.

    Dig deeper to understand your users problems, needs and goals

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    Experience maps are your tools to excavate the nuances of user behaviour, emotions, and motivations. Use this to win over their hearts and minds.

    Empathy-driven UX; Personas and experience maps

    By delving into the emotional landscape of proto-personas, designers can gain a deeper user understanding. This insight fuelled the development of a clear and empathetic experience map.

    Understand your audience types ; Their needs, aspirations, and behaviours. Commonalities and patterns will surface.

    Common Thread and Outcomes

    Despite resource limitations, this Content Audit project successfully utilised proto-personas to gain a deeper understanding of user needs. By consolidating and refining persona data into meaningful ‘chunks’, and effectively communicating findings to stakeholders, all lead to a deeper comprehension of users for all involved. This empowered us to move forward with the next stage – using experience maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.
    By selecting the most crucial key phrases from the workshop discussions, I was able to distil the essence of each audience type and crafted them into a call-to-arms that galvanised the mapping stage

    Expertise within the team distilled the most essential insights (i.e. OUTCOMES), transforming them into powerful ‘calls to arms’ that served as the foundation for the mapping stage.

    Next steps

    By consolidating vast amounts of data into prototype persona groups, this Service Design approach conveys insights for stakeholders to digest, leading to deeper user understanding for all involved. This then informs the next stage, ‘Using Experience Maps to uncover user behaviour and emotions.’

    Please note; for client confidentiality sensitive parts of all imagery has been pixelated. All work is copyright ©RussellWebbDesign 2024

    RussellWebbDesign: Get your fill of UX trends, case studies and best practice

    Pique’d your interest?

    This is but part of a selec­tion of design information rus­sell­webb­de­sign gen­er­ated for the creative community out there. Please con­tact me fur­ther to dis­cuss how your brand can ben­e­fit from the new channel: info@russellwebbdesign.co.uk

    If something has peaked your interest. Please leave a comment below.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App

    CASE STUDIES

    Design with the dark mode trend front-of-mind

    Delight, speed and satisfaction are rewriting our UX playbooks in finance

    Find out more
  • Dashboard UX to Business UI

    Dashboard UX to Business UI

    Enterprise-level, real-time data from multiple sources, instantly accessed, no more hunting.
    —
    A single-source-of-truth of unifying insights speak volumes: 56% iPad growth in just 1.5 years over 100K client meetings

    Contents

    The Problem Statement

    Problem framing

    Best practices

    Design principles

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 6k users

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 10K plus HNW users.

    Dashboard UX to Business U

    Within a strictly regulated financial environment my clients use dashboards data every day.

    Users

    Advice

    Quotes

    Investment

    As the world’s largest wealth manager, catering to affluent clients requires exclusive online services like advice, quotes and investment strategies, delivered digitally. Internal systems application empower the two principal user groups;

    • Customer Consultant Associates
    • Customer Consultant* (CCA’s/CC’s),

    Assembling these customer meetings takes time, accessing strictly private data to provide a complete, competitive and professional service requires a tailored and specialised tool – of which the Customer Meeting App* is the bank’s primary channel.

    What are the driving factors for developing a dashboard?

    Strategic insights

    Information architecture

    Single source

    Imagine client meetings where crucial information is instantly accessible, scattered data unified, and time spent hunting replaced by strategic insights. This is the potentially transformative power of the Customer Meeting App’s dashboard, built around three “must-have” features:

    1. Single point of access for disparate data
      Instead of opening various applications, interfaces, or online databases, the CCA’s/CC’s have a real-time dashboard.
    2. Broad overview with drill down capabilities
      A dynamic dashboard, digital documentation and secure access.
    3. Easier, faster, sign source of truth
      Consolidated statistic, statues displays, contextual information, and ‘Edit’ functionality placed intelligently for quick consumption.

    Achieving speed, clarity, and brand harmony

    Journey

    Processes

    Re-imagine

    Problem and Opportunity

    The existing offering had become redundant, with processes and previous ways of working no longer relevant or appropriate. The client required the seamless integration of data from third-party repositories and a significantly improved user journey. This presented a clear opportunity to re-imagine the complete ‘Create a Customer Meeting’ user journey.

    Dashboard UX to Business U

    Users do drive requirements, but in business there is another controlling factor. To sync the ‘Create a Customer Meeting’ , the ‘Adding account numbers’ journey there was a further requirement;.

    Funding

    Dashboard design best practice

    There are 3 dashboard design principles that are drove decisions and are considered best practice:

    Dashboard UX to Business U
    Personalisation, speed and convenience will drive any functional improvement and this project was no exception

    1. Five-second insight

    Funding was a principal driver for this project. Empowering a more intuitive process to adding customer data (account numbers, quote links, investment profile links, and upcoming future services) at a glance was key to the baseline UX.

    2. Inverted pyramid layout

    The inverted triangle displays the most significant insights on the top, trends in the middle, and granular details towards the bottom.

    3. Brand champion and ensure DS achievability

    Championing UCD principles for both organisation’s values and consistency was a challenge. Without a dedicated UX stakeholder, negotiating a new global Design System, within budget and development constraints proved demanding.

    Reimagining Client Meetings

    Scalability

    Visual Hierarchy

    Visual Design

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 10K plus HNW users.

    To reiterate the design process, I went through the following:

    1. Step 1 – Start with the user needs
      The foundation of successful design. Streamlining the preparation of a meeting, and principally future proofing the Create a Meeting process with a scalable UI that can seamlessly integrate new data repositories, ensuring long-term flexibility.
    2. Step 2 – Segment the experience in to ‘zones’
      The on-screen real estate delivers a quick look experience prioritising top from bottom.
    3. Step 3 – Test and Challenge through Prototyping
      Visualising up to 12 users’ journeys leads for better understanding and smoother development. Developers also need reassurance that this would be a boxed development and will not impact working code.
    Dashboard UX to Business UI
    Familiar web tab patterns are used as quick-links behind drop-down.

    Driving Discovery UX within a challenging Agile environment

    Hierarchy

    F-Pattern

    Low-fidelity prototyping

    This familiar UX pattern allows the user to view last modified content, it also adds value from a dashboard perspective by showing last messages and last documents/meetings in the expanded view.

    Early sketches are crucial: They reveal the potential of a dashboard, emphasising hierarchy through top-down, left-to-right user scanning patterns. Grouping key data, utilising white space, and enabling light touch drill-down are key drivers.

    Scope and hierarchy: Initial sketches focus on what’s important, pushing a hierarchical arrangement that guides the user’s eye. Data is prioritised with ‘glance-access’ to preview Meeting Name at the top, followed by Last Modified and owner information.

    Chain of command flow: Expanding on the ‘Mini’ concept, this ‘Maxi’ Dashboard version offers the full experience. Enabling the CCA’s/CC’s to very quickly assess top level meeting status and drill-down to Privacy Setting, customer ID photos, and Mode of Contact.

    Sketching a tailored experience

    Sketching a prioritise and tailored experience
    Sketching a prioritise and tailored experience
    Estimation sketches
    Estimation sketches
    Early sketches are invaluable when demonstrating the power of a dashboard. Hierarchy is brought to the forefront as we know users organically scan top-to-bottom, left-to-right, so grouping what’s important, employing white space and allowing light touch drill-down are all key drivers.

    What is in scope: These initial sketches start to show the power of a dashboard. Pushing the hierarchical arrangement, the user’s eyes organically concentrate from top to bottom, left to right. We have the data, so embracing the Meeting Name and grouping the Last Modified through to the Meeting Owner data just makes sense.

    Sketching a prioritise and tailored experience
    Expanding on the ‘Mini’ concept, this ‘Maxi’ Dashboard version offers the full experience.

    Estimation sketches 

    In Agile, pre-estimation is an important ceremony before sprinting. An efficient method of conveying your UI is to sketch and quickly map out the flow, the user interactions and where the final CTAs might be..

    Estimation sketches
    Great for conveying ideas, great for providing developers with top-level UI when it comes to their estimations
    Estimation sketches
    In Agile, pre-estimation is an important ceremony before sprinting.

    Realising a final solution

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 6k users

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 10K plus HNW users.

    Here we can see a Customer Consultant Associates (CCA’s) in the later stages of processing the outcomes of the meeting ‘New Economy Efficiencies’. The status of the meeting is highlighted Published and ready to be sync’d with the customer advisors iPad.

    A conceptual dashboard with multiple layers.

    The final solution solved both the scalability problem, providing easy access to account numbers, the ability to add other account numbers, visibility on the meeting date and time, and the meeting status and who is the meeting organiser, all there front-of-stall for the user. Complete transparency on meeting detail, including location, meeting language an whether the meeting has typed notes and freehand notes plus special features including packaging the meeting contents ready to send the customer and associating the meeting with a customer ID.

    A new dashboard suite is here;

    • Highly Readable
    • Inherently Scalable
    • Data-Driven
    Conceptual dashboard design revolves a rationale of multiple layers, user actions reveal more or less of those layers depending on their needs and wants.

    Design Trade-Offs

    Business Reality

    ROI

    Inverted Pyramid

    One key factor in the development (and acceptance) of this new radical design was ‘achievability’. Funding in a key developmental constraint with financial services, without it a project will not leave the ground – designing with business realities is a UX key skill. 

    Account number drill-down

    Deal breaking UX: Leverage real-wold feedback and user needs from complex requirements to simple solutions: Multi-account number functionality

    The UX was sold into the business as streamlining the ‘Create a Meeting’ user flow at a single glance, adding value at the advisory level.

    There are four (4) account numbers associated with this meeting. The user is able to hover, edit or launch a pop-over dialog box to create an account specific meeting from this functionality.

    Hierarchical details

    From ‘inverted triangle’ concepts, to hover state ‘tooltip’ functionality.

    Providing a tiered ‘inverted triangle’ proved to be an excellent facilitator for the single-point of truth concept. Employing hover state ‘tooltip’ functionality allowed for a broad overview with drill-down capabilities.

    Global Digital Shift

    Adoption

    Impact

    Massive UX Reach

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 6k users

    To respect confidentiality agreements, the branding and specific naming have been modified. This product is currently live and serving 10K plus HNW users.

    190 offices | Growth from 8% to 56% | 1.5 years

    40

    Countries

    190

    Offices

    100k

    100,000 Meetings

    48%

    8% to 56% Worldwide Growth

    The bank is present in more than 40 countries with approximately half of their 190 offices are in western Europe, where half of the Customer Meeting App meetings are delivered on the iPad. This is a phenomenal growth from 8% to 56% worldwide in the last 18 months.

    100,000 meetings prepared and delivered via the application each year. A true revolution!

    *Names changed to protect the innocent

  • What is the role of open banking in the super app evolution?

    What is the role of open banking in the super app evolution?

    TL;DR Open Banking unlocks a future where financial apps become indispensable partners. A power-shift to more convenience, better financial education and meaningful relationships. Read on to see What’s next in this new ecosystem?

    Contents

    Time: 5 mins

    Hard Skills:

    Journey Mapping

    Research

    Visual Design

    Soft Skills:

    Empathy

    Collaboration

    Critical Thinking

    Full List →

    What is Open Banking

    The role of open banking in the super app evolution is enormous, it is essential for creating a smoother user experience. Open banking is the core technology that allows these apps to draw financial data from multiple sources (APIs) and design products and services that speak to the needs and wants of the end-user.

    Open Banking helps super-apps with:

    • Personalisation: Gathering data to enhance recommendations, habits and trends based on the user’s behaviour.
    • Centralisation: One app to rule-them-all, one roof and one umbrella. No need to switch apps to switch functionality (i.e.make payments, check portfolio performance, monitor transactions, etc).
    • Open finance: Super apps and open banking are foundational pieces in the financial ecosystem jigsaw – mortgages, savings, pensions, insurance and credit, can all talk to each other.
    One app, multiple functionality – Users can monitor their portfolio performance, check allocations and assets values and confirm transactions all within one super app.

    Super app benefits for wealth management

    The end-user now enjoys luxuries that a few decades ago would seem unimaginable. Wealth Management (WM) was dated and rigid, Financial Institute in pole position, controlling the action. The birth of the super app has tipped the balance of power to the investor, putting them in charge of their finances.

    Investment performance is the return on an investment portfolio, with single or multiple assets, measured over a specific period of time and currency. This standard of UX did not exist previously.

    Convenience

    The super app has evolved to give the consumer (and investment professionals) a one-stop shop for all their finances. Investors used to jump from website to website and from platform to app to check transactions, transfer money, pay bills, etc. Now within is single-pane-of-glass, user control their financial world.

    Convenience – UX can elevate the transaction process to effectively display this ‘agreement’ between a buyer and seller to exchange goods, services, or assets for payment using Open Banking on any platform.

    Smarter decisions

    Phone a banker, broker or accountant to see how their money is affected by fragmented financial knowledge; Financial decisions needed the experts.

    • Did the expert always have your best interest at heart?
    • How close and personal was that relationship with these experts to trust their recommendations
    • How transparent were they?
    Make smarter decisions – Market volatility is the frequency and magnitude of price movements, up or down. The bigger and more frequent the price swings, the more volatile the market is said to be, benefiting you and your clients even more.

    The super app brought an dispassionate, clean, and precise approach to financial decision-making. It has trimmed-the-fat off the process, presenting users with the best viable option.

    Enter the financial super app

    A super app alleviates financial institutions from transaction processing, compiling data, building risk profiles and other traditional banking functions. It allows banking institutions to focus on building meaningful relationships with investors.

    It centralises their attention and indirectly allows Portfolio Managers to tailor their campaigns for new products and services. Relationship Managers now know where their audience is; all they have to do is put the right thing in front of them.

    From viewing fund performances to the allocation of assets, to understanding these assets positions, to what transactions have been actioned and reviewing portfolio valuation

    From viewing fund performances to the allocation of assets, to understanding these assets positions, to what transactions have been actioned and reviewing portfolio valuation.

    The future for financial super apps?

    Data management

    Third parties, organisations and fintech companies need to understand

    • Where the data is coming from
    • How they store it
    • How they use it

    This is the way to build bulletproof information flows.

    AI-driven Financial Coaching

    Artificial intelligence in money management apps process data quickly and efficiently. By monitoring financial behaviour, AI can assist users in maintaining smart savings, refinancing, achieving financial goals, and even more*.

    *With approval, of course

    Get in touch

    Want more?

    Discover how FI’s can can offer all clients personalised advice, how UX can help investment firms stay relevant in our neobank world and how to build a *Financial Super App – One click at a time.

    *NDA Case Study Walk-Thru

    RussellWebbDesign: Get your fill of UX trends, case studies and best practice

    info@russellwebbdesign.co.uk

    It truly is, a Brave New World!

    RussellWebbDesign: Get your fill of UX trends, case studies and best practice

    Pique’d your interest?

    This is but part of a selec­tion of design information rus­sell­webb­de­sign gen­er­ated for the creative community out there. Please con­tact me fur­ther to dis­cuss how your brand can ben­e­fit from the new channel: info@russellwebbdesign.co.uk

    If something has peaked your interest. Please leave a comment below.

  • Using Experience Maps to uncover user behaviour Pt II

    Using Experience Maps to uncover user behaviour Pt II

    TLDR: Reveal a tapestry of needs and motivations that shape financial decisions. Using Experience Mapping to uncover insights into the customer lifecycle and expose common threads.

    Contents

    Hard Skills:

    Journey Mapping

    Research

    Visual Design

    Soft Skills:

    Empathy

    Collaboration

    Critical Thinking

    Full List →

    Please note; for client confidentiality sensitive parts of all imagery has been pixelated. All work is copyright ©RussellWebbDesign 2023

    This article builds upon the previous post ‘Get to know your users better‘. For a more comprehensive understanding of the UX and Service Design process that led to this point, I encourage readers to refer back.

    Visualise the Journey

    From Common Themes to Experience Mapping

    You should now really begin to unravel the who, what and why that define your target audience. Now there is an opportunity to unearth the common themes that weave through their experiences, transforming them into actionable insights through experience mapping.

    Generic heat map, or Experience Maps showing user needs, problems and goals. Transform these themes into actionable insights that will guide the design process to resonate with the needs of your users.
    Generic heat map, or Experience Maps showing user needs, problems and goals. Transform these themes into actionable insights that will guide the design process to resonate with the needs of your users.

    Applying mapping techniques to personas types

    Shifting the traditional application of an experience map and focussing on the customer lifecycle particular to this financial services customer, more insight and understanding was surfaced by categorising the needs, problems, and goals distinct to an informed personas-type actioning a focussed single, representative task. These were segmented into emotions and motivations.

    In the details with Investor Type #1

    Plot what emotions a particular segmented persona was experiencing across a single representative task
    Plot what emotions a particular segmented persona was experiencing across a single representative task

    Investor type #1 persona – “I want to quickly get to the details of a fund” categorised how they were orientated through the digital experience and uncovered how to attract, engage, orient, and retain this specific persona. 

    The mindset of Investor Type #2

    By analysing how well the current design met these needs, we uncovered opportunities to attract, engage, and retain this valuable persona.
    Analysing the current design and uncover opportunities to attract, engage, and retain this valuable persona.

    Investor type #2 persona – Easily justify that a fund is performing also followed the control. Beginning with Orientation, linked to defined buckets and evaluating needs around investment philosophy, financial storytelling and model portfolios, for example. Identify what Attract mechanism drew them in and if ease-of-access to data influenced their decision-making process.

    Empowering Investor Type #3 with Confidence

    The 'Retain' narrative: Develop a more comprehensive understanding of investor needs and motivations, paving the way for a more tailored and effective digital experience.
    The ‘Retain’ narrative: Develop a more comprehensive understanding of investor needs and motivations, paving the way for a more tailored and effective digital experience.

    Investor type #3 persona – Guide me and make me feel in control when investing builds on the Retain narrative, examining how the digital experience addresses their need for support and guidance. From an Invest and Help perspective, how Risk is demonstrated and how to cultivate Trust empowering them to navigate the investment landscape with confidence.

    Type #4; The insider scoop

    Identifying opportunities to enhance the "Help" and "Invest" narratives, providing clear guidance, personalised recommendations, and transparent risk information.
    Identifying opportunities to enhance the “Help” and “Invest” narratives, providing clear guidance, personalised recommendations, and transparent risk information.

    Investor type #4 persona had the need to “Provide easily accessible information to reassure my position” as a corporate user. Touch points pushed to ’encouraged a long term time investment,’ and ‘establishing the real truth was behind the marketing efforts’. The needs and wants of this user all stemmed from cutting through the noise and showing insider industry knowledge for trends and success.

    The combined heat map

    Combined heat map: Highlighting the priority needs and common themes included storytelling, transparency and easy-to-understand content
    Combined heat map: Highlighting the priority needs and common themes included storytelling, transparency and easy-to-understand content

    Unifying insights to prioritise needs

    The combined heat map elevated the investor experience and fostered stronger relationships with clients and customers, empowering them to achieve their financial goals.

    Priority touch points

    This highlighted insight from the proto-persona grouped to Thinking and Doing actions during the activity; How our audience behaved within each section of the customer lifecycle.

    User needs by lifecycle

    By further analysing the results reveal traffic light priorities. Here I have only shown one persona group.

    By aligning content with user needs and ensuring stakeholder buy-in, this organisation can create a more impactful content strategy that drives business growth and enhances user experience.

    Next steps

    Dynamic Mapping

    Map identified priority touch-points

    Partner the priority touch-points identified in this article (and the previous ‘Get to know your users better‘) to the actual site content.

    30K Pages

    Resource & Allocation.

    With over 30K site pages, HR Resource and Budgeting need to use the above data in their Business Case to justify allocation.

    Alignment

    Stakeholder management

    Harnessing the collective energy of stakeholders to transform content into a powerful tool that drives results.

    By aligning content with user needs and ensuring stakeholder buy-in, this organisation can create a more impactful content strategy that drives business growth and enhances user experience.

    Please note; for client confidentiality sensitive parts of all imagery has been pixelated. All work is copyright © RussellWebbDesign 2023

  • How to run on-site UX Workshops and make them both valuable and fun

    How to run on-site UX Workshops and make them both valuable and fun

    TLDR: Recently, I had the privilege of leading a Design Thinking on-site 3-Day UX workshop for a global financial news organisation, a pioneering force in the industry. These workshops marked the launch of the discovery phase for a groundbreaking new product, and I was thrilled to guide the team through an immersive and productive experience.

    Contents

    Let’s set some ground rules

    Before I begin, let’s be clear, planning and preparation are you best friends. Be aware, planning creative sessions like these take time. Allow double the preparation time to the actual workshop time, so this three-day think tank translates to six days of dedicated planning. Having this knowledge is golden, don’t set yourself up to fail because you haven’t done your homework. Avoid the pitfalls of a hastily assembled workshop and set the stage for a truly groundbreaking experience.

    (more…)

  • How user personas can help crystallise the early stage design process

    TL;DR; A large automotive client wanted to improve their dealer portal but the client needed guidance on understanding their audience’s needs and wants. Personas generation is a great to focus the team’s expectations and contributes to a better product and service.

    Contents

    B2B UX Case Study – Automotive Dealer Portal

    I was recently asked to provide insight for a dealer portal for a very large automotive client. There was a definite opportunity in their market to improve their internal front end offering – but very early on it was clear there was a lack of understanding of who their audience was. How their needs and wants differed and what, as customers, they were looking for.

    So, before deep-diving in the UX,  I produced a selection of personas to focus down the teams expectations and unite the groups thinking. I’m taking for granted that we are all aware that personas represent a typical user, based on user research and incorporate user goals, needs, and interests. Here I created four (4) personas, Hilary, Gary, Donald and Bernie;

    1.1 – Hillary, a Competitive Owner / Consider

    "“My
    (more…)