Background:
PwC is introducing a new product. They need a website that will serve as a marketing tool.
Pain Points:
The website should be able to sell the success the product has had so far internally. It should be evident to external users that we are ready to take on their requirements too.
Solution:
The team is creating a website that will serve as a mouthpiece for the product’s success as well as will provide ways for users to get in touch with the team behind it.
Duration:
3 Months
My Role:
I worked in a team as a UX designer collaborating with UI developers, Project manager and Internal stakeholders.
Callenges:
Capturing brand image of a newly created product on the website. Maintaining already existing brand image of the firm that’s the new product is part of.
Introduction
PwC needed a website that will serve as a marketing tool for their new product. I worked in this team as a UX designer collaborating with UI developers, project manager, Internal stakeholders and the product owner.
My personal contributions include-
-
UX research & strategy, Requirement capturing, Internal stakeholder reviews, User interviews, persona creation
-
user flows, sitemaps, wireframes, visual design options, mockups, working with UI developers to create interactive prototype
-
Usability testing, Heuristic markups, design reviews with the business team.
-
Technologies used by me are Sketch, Adobe Creative suite, UXPin.
What Needs be to Designed?
-
It was made clear to me that the team needed to design a website that will endorse the new product.
-
The question that needed to be answered was what is it that we were trying to sell through our end product (the website)?
-
To find out, I conducted internal stakeholder review sessions to get a preliminary understanding of what the PwC product was- Automation.
Analyzing Market Trends
Automation is a relatively new technology and it is certainly to me. So to find out how major players in the market present their automation products on their websites, I conducted a competitive analysis.
Some of the considered parameters were:
-
Type of automation products
-
Overall site structure
-
Content of homepage
-
Styling
-
Ways for users to connect with them
Some of the insights from the competitive analysis were:
-
Classic, minimalistic design with AI-like motifs are used
-
Verbiage and visual content is used in equal amounts
-
Due to novelty, concept of automation is explained for users at some point on the websites.
-
Success stories are used to market this comparatively new technology- case studies and video interviews being widely popular.
-
CTA locations, supporting links (blogs, articles, etc.)
Who are the Users?
-
The real intended users of this product are people who are part of but not limited to Tax, Audit and Assurance business units.
-
In an ideal scenario, I would have liked to capture requirements from the actual user group through qualitative or quantitative ways, i.e. in-person interviews and online surveys respectively.
-
But due to certain restrictions from the product owner, unforeseen changes in the leadership and some confidentiality and internal security related conflicts, I was not given permission to conduct any data gathering from external participants.
-
I negotiated several ways of doing data capturing with the product owner. Explained that just doing internal stakeholder reviews is not enough for optimal usability.
How I solved the issue:
I proposed to conduct data gathering from within the company by interviewing or doing usability testing with PwC employees who fit the potential user profile (use automation software and have purchased it at some point).
Requirements Capturing
In the early stages of the project, I conducted several internal stakeholder reviews to understand the business team’s vision for the product. Here are some insights:
-
Idea lab is our sister website that we needed to endorse this product to fulfill certain business requirements (can’t be disclosed due to confidentiality reasons).
-
Some of PwC’s own automation products have been hugely successful during internal release. The business unit really wanted to capitalize on that success.
-
Digital Factory was a relatively new concept in PwC. The BU wanted to make sure that how it works is clearly explained for our new users.
With the help of my business analyst, I reached out to some PwC employees who had either purchased or aided their team in purchasing an automation software (since it was not already provided internally by PwC).
Once I was connected to a few participants, I created questionnaires and conducted user interviews. Some of the major insights were:
-
Saving time was of utmost importance.
-
Most participants noted that they like to see reviews from users from other reputable firms, since these are expensive mostly one-time purchases.
-
Participants noted that when they browse automation websites, they like to see some of the successful projects from that company to have a better idea of the maker’s profile.
-
TAX, Assurance and Advisory business units rarely use the same auto-bots. But that doesn’t mean they are completely mutually exclusive.
Brainstorming Sessions
Based on insights from stakeholder reviews and interviews, I created two personas that represented the potential user group as accurately as possible. These personas helped me congeal various issues that had come up throughout the requirement capturing process in to two user profiles. It helped me evoke empathy for users as well as focus on specific issues that came up most frequently in the research phase.
Mapping Research
onto Design
Based on the insights so far it was clear that this website needed to perform a few major functions
-
Presenting past success stories (projects and clients)
-
Some way for new users to request for desired auto-bot
-
Some way for external users to submit their automation ideas.
-
An admin portal in the backend that will help the team manage website in terms of repeatedly adding new success stories.
Flow Diagram
Wireframes
Visual Design
-
During competitive analysis, I paid special attention to the visual appeal of competitor websites.
-
I created a few mood boards that captured different types of motifs.
-
One of the options was high tech look with austere use of colors, sharp edges, shadows, stock images, lot of screenshots etc.
-
Other option was a look with more friendly feeling. It had warm colors, rounded edges, no shadows, stylized artwork, minimum screen shots, etc.
-
Of course, all options were created while keeping PwC style guide in mind.
Mood Boards
-
During one of the design reviews the stakeholders chose mood board option 1 with a few modifications. As per the product owner’s input darker colors needed to be used. After a few iterations, a combination of Black, White, Red (and Orange as accent) were chosen from the PwC library.
-
Since this was a team with sizable number of internal stakeholders and especially the main product owner heavily involved in the design decisions/UX process, I was expected to present a few options of how the website will look like early on in the process. I mocked up a few mid-fidelity versions of the home page during the requirement capturing phase, in order to satisfy the growingly impatient business team, who was not sure if UX research was the best use of everyone’s time.
Low-fidelity Mockup
Mid-fidelity Mockup
After a few design review sessions with the team one visual design look was finalized which I used for the whole site.
Is the Design Doing Its Job?
-
During very little amount of time I was allowed for usability testing, I decided to test the prototype with three participants using task analysis, think aloud technique and post-test interviews.
-
Some of the UX KPIs for success were- users made “Automation requests” through the website, users made enquiries, Users understood how to visit “Digital Lab” and “Idea Lab”
-
"Success stories"case studies were well received by users, as they stated that this section helped them make decisions more confidently.
-
The issue that caused the most negative comments and confusion was the existence of two forms- "Request Automation" and "Contact Us".
-
The fact that both the forms had a few similar fields and purposes seem to baffle participants.
-
One of major business requirement was to make visitors of the website understand how the concept of "Digital Factory" works. This was successfully achieved as all participants completed the task with ease and minimum time.
-
Another major requirement presented by the product owner was that users must be easily able to navigate towards our sister site "Idea Lab". Even though participants were easily able to do it, they were confused about the reason behind why exactly they were navigated there.
What I Learned...
-
When design is micro-managed by other forces, it's useful to back up one's design decisions with data, market or user research as much as possible which will help rest of the team make better choices.
-
Even though it's not the best UX practice, while dealing with impatient product owners, it's better to have some form of prototype/visual presentation of the final product ready as soon as possible so the designer knows what business wants and more importantly doesn't want. This will eventually save rest of the team's time.