Project Type

UX Research Internship

Role

UX Designer and Front end Developer

Duration

May to August 2019

Skills

competitive Analysis, Contextual Inquiry, User testing, Surveys, User Testing, Wireframing, Digital Prototyping, Interface Design

Reputation Studio

They help enterprise brands improve customer experience through their automated review analysis and response platform

The Problem

New Users are taking too long to be fully able to use the platform themselves.

The Solution

A free-trial that would enable users to set up the platform using their product line(s), educate them about the platform and notify the users about what to expect while they are on the trial period.

All my research and designs were aimed to satisfy these three tenets

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Easy

Users should be able to able to register their products on the free-trial easily

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Awareness

Free-trial flow should convey the extent of functionality available to the users

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Consistency

The flow experience should be consistent across mobile, laptops and tablets

Solution Overview

Free trials are supposed to get users excited about the product, but since enterprise products have quite a learning curve, the trial flow needs to educate the users on what they can do and what they can get out of the product before they even reach the product. Also, a free trial should set the product up for the users such that they experience minimum cognitive load. That is, all they have to do is click a button to get the result.

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A flexible Designer

As a designer, It is my job to ensure that the team moves forward with a product that is the most usable, requires minimum effort to implement, has the highest ROI, and does not ask a lot from the users and not the most flashy looking product.

I started experimenting with different non-tech and tech solutions, like designing a customized workflow for the sales and onboarding team, a customized handout document/video for the new users, or designing a free trial for the product. While the nontech solutions had some advantages like ease of implementation, the disadvantages like the significant effort from the users' side and asking the sales team to invest their valuable selling time led me to drop them and go forward with the Free trial idea. The free trial would help the new users to learn about the product in their own time and let the sales and onboarding team can use that teaching time to find new potential clients.

Therefore, the product team went forward with the free trial idea .

Methodology

Planning

The initial weeks were spend to reading literature and trying out free trials of the competitor companies and ventures in the same spaces to get an idea about the best practices or the mistakes that we need to avoid. This helped me narrow down some of the key elements of the free trial. The most important ones were

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The competitors that I analyzed were :

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I chose these companies because they were the top-performing products that not only had their enterprise products out in the market but also had a free trial flow integrated with their product..

Knowing the product before designing

I sent out an anonymous survey to understand the team's standing on the current status of the product, what are the product's essential features, least used features, and any new features if they are working on one.

Picturing the ideal users

I was designing a product that would help that company make better customer relationships. Therefore, this product needs to sell itself to the buyer (product head) and educate the users of this product (customer service/engagement) at the same time. I created two personas - User and a Buyer. These personas accurately portrayed each of their needs and helped me make accurate design decisions.

What would an ideal free trial look like?

I wanted to understand what users feel about using a free-trial and what motivates them to reject or buy a product after using a free-trial. I designed a questionnaire for people who had used a free-trial product before or were responsible for purchasing or rejecting a product.

I did 50 face-to-face interviews out of which 20 had the opportunity to use a free-trial product when I accompanied the team in a conference.

Main Findings

Some of the main findings were as follows

  1. 75% of the respondents stated they would like an enterprise free trial to be for 30 days because then they could explore many of its features and make a concrete buying decision.
  2. The AHA moments is when they get all the information about product i.e., features, cost and time limit without any confusion and before landing on the product.
  3. 50% of the respondents cancelled the free trial product because the trial time was too short for them to explore the product.

Why is Reputation Studio appealing to the users?

The next step was to interview current and potential users to understand why did they stick with the product and what made them consider this product, respectively.

I went into the field with the sales team during the sales visits and listened to the sales call and interviewed the clients after the meeting/call.

Main Findings

Some of the main findings were as follows

  1. Review analysis was the essential feature.
  2. They chose this product because the users can see the satisfaction rate for every single product on the market.

Exploring ideas

The interview was beneficial as it helped me and the team understand the fundamental needs that a user looks for in a free trial as well as it gave me a brief idea about the features that we need to include in the free trial. Sketching exercise helped me during a rapid brainstorming process where the main goal was to identify ways to implement a feature and also to map a user's journey throughout the free trial.

Flow Mapping

Wireframing

Visualizing users' journey

Quick sketching helped us try out different flows that a user can take, once all the team members were on board, I converted the sketches into a flow diagram that acted as a quick reference point for high fidelity wireframing and designing.

High Fidelity Wireframing

I used all the design ideas and thoughts collected from the sketching and Journey mapping to create high fidelity wireframes for 2 flows.

User testing

I designed interactive prototypes using Adobe XD and documented the user tests using notes, audio recordings, transcriptions, and screen capture. Due to privacy concerns, I am unable to publish the collected results, however I am happy to discuss further details upon request. The different design implementations are as follows.

Final Result

After two rounds of online user testing i.e., one with professionals from the CEO's network and other with sales experts, the reactions and results for each of these prototypes were analyzed to determine the flow that was the easiest to use. Below are some of the sample design screens for the onboarding UX.

Final Thoughts

This was one of the best UX Design Internships that I have been a part of and I got to learn a lot throughout the course of 10 weeks.

1.) I got to work as a UX Researcher,a UX Designer,a Product Designer and a front-end developer

2.) I learned how to adapt in stressful situations and became more flexible as a result of remote testing exercises



As fun as it was to solve complex business problems, it is also important to appreciate some factors that might have negatively affected the research and prototype test results.

1.) The geographical location imposed many restrictions, which is why I had to use remote methods in various stages of the design process to get useful insights.

2.) Due to time limitations I could test 2 user flows for the product.