Johnson & Johnson / Strategy, Metrics, Engagement / 2023
Baselining Product Performance and Unlocking User Needs to Improve Platform Experience
Overview
Product X is a centralized data management solution within Johnson & Johnson’s Supply Chain division. I and my fellow designers seamlessly integrated into Product X’s agile team, with a focus on improving usability and driving user adoption by identifying and addressing existing pain points and inefficiencies. I played a key role in shaping an effective UX strategy, which involved defining clear objectives, crafting an actionable plan, and aligning the team around a cohesive vision for an improved user experience. This endeavor not only secured buy-in and cultivated trust from product leadership, but also empowered users of Product X.
Role
UX Strategist
Evaluative & Summative Research
Stakeholder Management
Workshop Facilitation
Data Synthesis
Team
Experience Designer (XD)
Jr Experience Designer (XD)
+ collaboration with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Technical Product Owner (TPO), Business Product Owner (BPO)
Year
2023
Summary
01.
Challenge
Product X, a centralized data management platform, streamlines record recovery and data collection in order to empower users with effortless information exchange, fostering informed decision-making and heightening productivity.
As the Experience Design team began to embed ourselves deeper onto the established product team, in order to be most effective in our contributions, we set out to understand the current experience of users. From inherited research and stakeholder assumptions, we knew that a lack of user awareness of system capabilities, incomplete data sets, and weak data organization for data pulled from multiple source systems were key challenges users experience in the current system.
Opportunity
HMW create an intuitive and user-friendly experience within the data platform ecosystem, allowing users of all levels to effortlessly access and utilize data for informed decision-making and increased productivity?
Approach
Crafting a User-Centered Strategy: We defined clear objectives, developed an actionable plan, and aligned the team around a cohesive product and UX vision.
Baselining Performance: By analyzing product performance data, I established a baseline and identified areas for improvement. I continued this practice of evaluative research by tracking metrics in subsequent feature releases, to measure system performance over time. This equipped the product team with hard data for progress tracking.
Unlocking User Needs: Through user research, I began to unearth user pain points and inefficiencies impacting adoption. I also started to understand our users on a deeper level, developing proto-personas and documenting the distinct experiences different populations face in their work.
Impact
Stakeholder Buy-In and Trust: Our data-driven approach secured buy-in and cultivated trust from product leadership, embedding us deeper into product the team and providing us with more resources for effective execution.
Strategic Alignment: The UX roadmap ensured our efforts aligned with project goals, keeping leadership informed on our progress and onboard with our research goals.
Transformative Journey: Evidence-based insights and continuous user dialogue fueled a transformative journey towards an enhanced user experience, demonstrated by design decisions and feature enhancements based on both business goals AND user needs.
User Empowerment: By creating a culture to address user needs, we empowered users to speak up and engage with the platform team and paved the way for improved user experiences and data management practices.
Research
02.
Baseline Study
Objectives
Identify current product experience by baselining for UX Lite and Confidence, and through qualitative feedback
Uncover user behavior trends, including key tasks, average weekly usage of system, and popular functional role types
Methodology
User survey: Quantitative, indirect; attitudinal; decontextualized
Tool: Qualtrics
Response count N=73
Feature Release Study
Objectives
Understand current level of user awareness of product feature sets and system updates
Track and trend for baselined metrics
Learn about user pain points & system frustrations
Methodology
User survey: Attitudinal, decontextualized
Tool: Qualtrics
Response count N=123 (+50)
Findings
According to our users, the greatest value of Product X is its centralized access to data, and the relative ease of use compared to source systems. Based on key learnings, I identified the following as opportunity areas for our team to prioritize as focus areas for further investigations, as well as future enhancements.
What we learned
Platform is currently trending consistent in usefulness and ease of use, averaging score of 4 out of 5 (+/- 0.2)
Power users satisfied with quality of communications & training, but not true for novice users
Lack of awareness of new feature capabilities a major hinderance to user adoption & engagement
What we find opportune
Expanded functionalities for different business cases
Update training for new users
Increased awareness of product-related communications
What we recommend
Improving user control and consistency needs to be prioritized
Assist users with concise navigational paths and increase call to actions
Provide consistent updates to users regarding fixes, updates, releases, etc.
Proto-personas
As our understanding of the different users of the system grew, I created proto-personas of Product X’s target users from our working assumptions. These proto-personas pull from the attitudinal studies we conducted, and will continue to develop with the user-outreach activities mapped out in our UX roadmap. For now, user segmentation is split between experience level. All users vary in role types and functional responsibilities, but share common pain points. Although I focused on two target user types, I believe this delineation will have to evolve as the line between novice and power user does not account for the population that can’t cleanly fit into either of these buckets, nor does it speak to the behavior of casual vs active user.
Power User, Data Manager
Frustrations
System may not contain the full data set or system connections he needs
Constantly having to look for system enhancements to help expedite product/batch work
Must attend “Office Hours” to review new updates & functionality
Needs
Training for new features
Ways to customize data sets for easy retrieval
A place to store all product-related documents, which are currently located in disparate sources
Novice User, Data Analyst
Frustrations
Time & Efficiency: Not one clear path to information, making sifting and finding data inefficient & time-consuming
Lost: Not sure how to optimize search requests to find the right documents or data, and not certain what to expect from the system.
Needs
More information about how to navigate the system and how to get to the data they are looking for, for their specific functions.
Training to be able to use the system to its full capacity.
Conclusion
03.
Impact
Our UX integration into the agile process significantly improved the project. By proactively establishing user-centered decision-making, we secured buy-in from leadership and embedded UX principles within the product team. This collaborative approach accelerated progress, allowing us to learn more from users in less time compared to previous efforts.
“This is beautiful, wow, you really... This is stuff we have been trying to do, like a small fraction of what you’re trying to do, takes us months and you’re getting it done in such a short period of time.”
Next Steps
We'll leverage the strong stakeholder support to conduct task shadowing with three key user roles. By comparing their current workflow to offline tasks, we aim to identify friction points and prioritization areas. Collaboration with subject matter experts (SMEs) will enrich our insights, demonstrating trust in our ability to deliver valuable data-driven recommendations. This data will also be crucial for measuring progress towards our Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).