Project Description:
Design an in app Support section of an existing mobile App (StarLink). Version 1 of the app support was researched, designed, and tested in a 3-week timeframe.
Project Management:
Agile, Kanban, Daily Standups, Project Planning
Team:
Emiliia K (Team Lead)., Lance B., Daniel C.
Tools:
Axure
Photoshop, Illustrator
OmniGraffle, Optimal Workshop
Solution:
Designed in-app Customer Support section, which includes Troubleshooting, FAQs, Ask the Experts, Help Videos, Support Chat and Call Support sections.
Opportunity:
Autel Robotics is focused on creating, selling and supporting quadcopters. They are dedicated to creating the best experience for their customers, especially through Support. My team analyzed the current in app support situation and came up with an improved experience from using the company's web support section.
My role:
As Team Lead, I focused on project planning, information architecture, clickable prototyping, and usability testing. Together we researched, designed, tested, and iterated on a solution that fulfilled user and business goals.
Summary:
I received totally new and valuable experience from working on this opportunity, with the constraints I hadn't had in my previous projects. The initial goal of our client was to give the drone pilots an opportunity to self-solve their issues. This would also allow our client to decrease the number of contacts to Customer Support. We analyzed common issues with Autel Robotics' drones and populated Troubleshooting section with the content aimed to help the pilot to self-solve the issue. We also gave the pilot an opportunity to contact Customer Support directly, no matter in which Support category he's located at the moment (e.g. you can start Live Chat with one click even if you're viewing Troubleshooting category right now ).
Why it's interesting:
Autel Robotics launched their first recreational drone in April 2016 and didn't have a large database of support requests. Due to the small sample size of data, we created a hypothesis of when, where, and why customers would contact Autel Robotics Support, and we created solutions based on that hypothesis. Another interesting design challenge was the fact that the user seeking support in most cases was already very unhappy and frustrated, so each design mistake negatively impacts the company’s reputation in providing excellent support. There were two teams of Designers working with the same client but on different tasks. I was the primary liaison between the teams. We collaborated on user research where possible and stakeholder interviews, as to not overwhelm our point of contact with communication from both teams while still gathering the necessary information.
Kick-off:
Team working on Project Plan V2
Project Plan V1
To make sure we had not only user but the business in mind as well, we needed to understand our stakeholder’s primary goals. To do so, my team and I created a Stakeholder Interview Script and combined it with other team. Together we conducted Stakeholder Interview and defined the main Stakeholder Goals. To ensure my team could work together easily, we created the Team Communication Plan. As a team we decided to use Agile method for the project management style.
My Design Process:
1. Research:
We started to work on the project doing deep and solid research. Alongside Domain, Organizational and User research we also analyzed Support Best Practices. Since our client didn't have a big database of support requests at that time , we focused more on Competitor/Comparative analysis. We analyzed all support sections of our competitors (3DR and DJI). I performed secondary research on drone enthusiasts' forums to find out which problems pilots might experience with their drones and what might be a reason for them to seek Support.
At this point we decided that the largest opportunity would be to help the user which is experiencing issues out in the field, most probably he'll have his mobile phone or tablet with him. So each solution was made through prism of "Does the user need this feature/information in the field or not?".
I made Content Audit and analyzed Information Architecture of the Support section on Autel Robotics' website. We did Card Sorting exercise with 8 participants to see how users tend to group information present in the website's Support section. After Content Audit was done we decided which content will go to our in-app Support section.
Information Architecture analysis
Card Sorting on Support content
After all of the listed above was done we started our User Research. We created User Interview Screener and User Interview Script. I conducted first pilot User Interview to find flaws in our script and make sure the script is built in such way that we get the most valuable data from the interview. As a result of this pilot interview we changed around 50% of the initial script. We conducted 7 User Interviews and 5 Contextual Inquiries on a drone festival, pretty good foundation to start making assumptions.
Michael Davidson - is our persona (on the left). User Research showed that people tend to self-solve problems first and if they're unsuccessful they will contact Customer Support directly, it perfectly matched our client's goals. With each step our design challenge became clearer: we had to design in-app Support in such way that user could easily find a solution to his problem or contact Customer Support if he couldn't self-resolve.
2. Plan:
One of key design decisions was to switch from redesigning of the website's Support section to designing Support section for "StarLink" native App. Here we stumbled into another obstacle: IA of the native app had certain issues and it was hard to fit Support section with it's own structure into it. Our final IA resolution fit into the current structure of the app, but we also advised our client it would be beneficial to redesign the IA of the whole app.
We decided to focus on two scenarios: 1. when Michael is able to self-solve; 2. when Michael contacts Customer Support for help. For the sake of time we created two user flows which involved using Troubleshooting section and Live Chat option.
3. Design:
One challenging constraint here was the fact that the existing native app (StarLink) was in the middle of a redesign process. The current release of the app and couple of proposed redesigned screens of the new design were all what we had to work with. After we analyzed the screens of the new design we conducted Design Studio exercise (sketch brainstorming practice), trying both to generate creative solutions and stick to the proposed app's design. As a result of Card Sorting and Content Analysis we already knew that the Support section should contain the following categories: Troubleshooting, FAQ, Ask the Experts, Help Videos, Support Chat, Call Support. As the exercise was completed, my team and I decided that the design should be minimalistic, easy to navigate, and with lots of space left for the actual content (like troubleshooting articles). I was responsible for creating a clickable prototype in Axure. I really enjoyed prototyping and consider Axure a very powerful and easy to understand tool, but sometimes glitchy though :)
Smartphone screen of mobile app (StarLink) provided by Autel Robotics' visual Designer.
4. Test
We conducted 3 usability tests, which immediately revealed some areas for improvement. Troubleshooting articles should have been broken into more digestible chunks. Users wanted to use Search, this option wasn't clickable, moreover as a team we were not sure if we want to have Search at all. Our users were not interested in "Ask experts" option, I think this should be tested more with experienced drone pilots.
Conclusions:
Working with a startup has been very interesting. I have really enjoyed performing the research and assisting with the overall development of a new app feature that will help drone users.
The most important things I've learned:
- Make sure I understand the structure of the whole product before focusing on the structure of one piece of the product.
- Project management is difficult. I have learned how to delegate tasks to individuals and collaborate after the majority of that task has been completed.
- Assess your colleague's strengths and weaknesses so that they can be put to the task of doing what they are best at.
The next steps I recommend:
- Perform more usability tests to solidify design patterns and understand what process is best for our users.
Instruct Customer Support team to categorize incoming support requests, identify Known Issues and populate website/app with right content to troubleshoot the issues.
Do more User Research.