Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Simplii
My team was requested to design and deliver a new feature which will enable existing clients to open a mutual fund account online. As the UX designer in my team, I was responsible for delivering the User Experience for this new feature.
I observed that when our team was engaged to fulfill this request, no reference to measures of insights is given with regards to the initiative, no upfront research was made to mitigate risks, “best user experience” was de-prioritized, and timeline expectations were made without our team’s input for estimations.
How might I maintain a decent user experience, without the support of existing analytics, upfront research, and inclusion of design estimations?
Observation
When my POD team was approached to fulfill a request for a new feature in Simplii’s online website, we were asked to deliver designs in a very short turnaround time, with little explanation as to the objectives and its goals. Initially we started with a few meetings as a form of requirements gathering. It ended up being a meeting with a few strong personalities dominating the conversations.
Evaluate
Notes were being taken, but through my experience they are a nuisance to track afterwards and consume. Before we can create the new feature, I believe that we really needed to understand the existing service. Relying on conversations are not very good in retaining the descriptions expressed in them. Through my evaluation, I realized that the current experience needed to be visualized and be more consumable to all stakeholders.
Take initiative and facilitate.
Taking the initiative, I approached the Product Owner to see if I can take the next planned meeting to conduct a workshop for expediting the requirements gathering. Observing that the meetings were not productive for all, I felt compelled to facilitate the next meeting into a Current State Journey Mapping session, so that the team has a clear and aligned picture of what the current product is, so as to be better informed on how we might expand its reach online.
Facilitating a workshop to expedite knowledge about the current service.
Visualized the current state, and manifested to all what the experience is like.
Outcomes of initiatives
Users are identified in terms of who are the role players in the experience.
Scope is identified in terms of what scenario to focus the initiatives on.
Subject matter is understood by all team members and partners.
Encouraged participation from all.
Descriptions are visualized in a concise fashion.
Information is documented
Areas of the business is highlighted in the context of the service.
Design while knowing your team audience.
At every step of the design process, knowing your internal team audience is just as important as knowing who you are designing for. This enables you to craft your deliverables in such a way, so as to communicate clarity and value based on their mental model, optimizing your chances for better buy-ins, and mitigating risks in road blocks.
Demonstrate design as a teaching moment to project expertise.
Once I had stabilized some concepts based on outcomes we wanted to achieve as a team, I was ready to demonstrate the designed outputs. I also wanted to make use of the occasion to teach since not everybody in the team was well versed in user centered design practices, and its value. So in the demo, I had to make sure that the intent was well communicated with reference to best practices in usability, but also the need to remind the team to be conscientious about users mental models, and how they need to be validated.
State what they should expect in the demo and take them through the design.
Outcomes for designing while teaching
Process is transparent.
Team began to learn best practices and design methods.
Better learning better feedback.
Contributes to informed decision-making on design.
Expertise projected.
Communicate with clarity with deliverables.
With designers, business systems analysts, and developers as stakeholders, you need to be able to communicate with clarity, so as to prevent ambiguity of direction. The more ambiguous your design deliverables are, cost for refactors or delays starts to mount up. Wireflows provide a way to define design intent to a point that stakeholders are less likely to come across road blocks to achieve their goals.
Outcomes for clear deliverables
Outputs are contextual by showing the relationships between components.
Scenarios in the app are brought to light.
Task flows are demonstrated for clear direction to developers.
Best practices are communicated to the whole team.
Usability is expanded on to direct Visual Designers.
Annotations are made to eliminate ambiguity.
Document debt and ensure measures for improvement.
Because the project was put in motion with little turnaround time, lots of risks were made in terms of compromises in the design. Not only did I have to over communicate them to the team, but I had to document them to prepare for its future improvements. I did this through UX debt documentation, and prescribed recommendations for analytics.
Debt and planned measurements outcomes
UX debt is tracked to ensure continuous improvement.
Risks are made transparent to alert team, and major stakeholders.
Gives the design team future material to evaluate and improve designs.
Communicates that design is not guesswork.
Orients the organization to make decisions based on evidence.
Allows design to manage requests in the future.
Make your case.
Knowing that design is often misunderstood in terms of its utilization for the business, I have made it a habit to make my case for investing in it more through evidence by way of demos. In this case, I provide evidence through how design operated at every step to assist the business not only for the present, but also for the future.
Quarterly executive level demo.
For every end of the quarter in a fiscal year, teams in digital design had to present their milestones. Among those in attendance are Execs, Directors, and Leads from different parts of the bank. When the Mobile Design Manager requested that I present the current project our team worked on for the quarter, I thought it was an opportune moment to showcase how design solved for the business and its value.
Executive level demo outcome
Transparency of pitfalls when design is not given much consideration in terms of budget and timelines.
Value of design is demonstrated.
Other design teams are exposed to ways our team solved a specific problem.
Conversations in the executive level are initiated to potentially improve future engagements.