Context
I first joined this product area to support redesigning and placing additional features to a settings page used to configure onboarding requirements for our customers’ sites.
I soon uncovered that the settings page comprised of various features stacking one after another; some of them acted as responses to individual customer requests and tentatively conflicted with each other. So “to redesign” there implied the information architecture of the settings page as well as the impacts of the settings on the functionalities at the end-user side.
There was no documentation on use cases to describe (1) what customers “hired” the product for and (2) what users needed in-and-outside of the system to complete their tasks. Missing these contextual details posed a challenge in designing a system that makes sense to all user types. So I decided to take a step back and led a research effort—to better understand how users were handling onboarding in the industry.
Process
To gain more understanding of the product space, and to prepare myself for speaking the same language with my participants, I read government regulations on the onboarding process for selected industries, looked at implementation documents of selected customers, and watched recordings of past interviews related to the product.
After gathering more knowledge about the product space and the thought process behind the decisions, I connected and simplified all the configuration features, resulting in a new structure for the settings page.
However, I was still unsure about the impacts on the end-users if the new structure got adopted, due to the lack of knowledge about their needs.
I designed a research session to have two parts.
I ran an interview in the first part, to learn more about the requirements and user workflow in the context of the customers’ industries. In the background, I had another team member assist me with filling out the cards with the interview data. Requirements not fitting in with the structure were also noted down, as they would be the gaps to be addressed later.
In the second part, I showed participants the cards prepared previously, and asked them to sort the cards into a structure that made sense to them, while explaining their thoughts.
This approach was very effective in recalling user memories, adding context to the cards, and reducing the confusion for the participants as they were going through the study, which brought back high-quality research data and useful directional insights.
Outcome
With a combined understanding of both the system and user, I proposed a new structure for the settings page and carefully mapped out how upcoming features, along with existing ones, would fit into both the new system and the end-user experience.
More importantly, the research revealed that this product concept is needed at multiple points in a user workflow—not just during onboarding. These insights helped the Product team gain a broader view of the user experience and strategically plan for upcoming work.