After rigorous planning and rehearsing, our team dispersed around the globe. From San Francisco, we conducted quantitative surveys, and in Europe and USA we conducted longform qualitative in-context interviews.
Interviews were 45 minutes each, all conducted on-site of the user's place of work.
At the end of the research, we wanted to give the client a sense of the raw data, so they would be able to empathize with different opportunity areas and pain points. We did this through a series of meetings, workshops, and documents.
Because the client was casting a wide net, and wanting to design for current customers and new customers, along with including all geographical locations, and levels of heirarchy within an organization (boots to suits), we chose to use archetypes instead of personas. The ended up with 3 archetypes.
Showing the tool adoption journey in an organization for tools that are accessible to end users and can create a buzz organically within an organization (like Slack!).
Showing the tool adoption journey for larger purchase software that must be vetted by IT (like G-Suite).
The two strategists on the project put together an analysis of all the players in the space.
We had many validated Opportunity areas. Our biggest challenge was deciding on one!
After many workshops with much deliberation, we decided to move forward with the Opportunity of solving for productivity with remote teams. One insight leading up to this was 'The meeting is only 1/3rd of the meeting. The pre and post meeting are just as important for accountability, buy-in, and productivity.' Another insight was that 'remote work doesn't work if there are no rituals or team culture around making it work'.
In this phase we took a collaborative approach with the client - leading ideation sessions and brainstorms. We started with loose sketches and blue sky ideas, and honed in on a few key concepts that we refined into one product.
Each of these sketches represents an idea that attacks a critical pain point associated with the opportunity area.
Idea: Allow the user to invite individuals to only part of the meeting. Suggest alternative invitees. Suggest alternative times. Take out all work surrounding the meeting invite that can be automated, based on knowledge of employees calendars and org chart.
Idea: Express to individual contributors why they are being invited to the meeting and what they are expected to contribute.
Idea: Allow users to contribute to meetings that they cannot attend, via digital means that can be cataloged and shared during, before, or after the meeting.
We conducted 8 interviews across 3 countries, all remote, during which we had users interact with a wireframe and attempt to accomplish tasks, then answer qualitative user value questions. We also shared final UI and asked questions about that. Here is a video of the wireframe, and 2 images of the final UI we proposed.
