Rapid High-Fi Prototyping to Deliver Value, Fast

Validate before you build to ensure you’re getting the most out of development.

Through user research and rapid high-fidelity prototyping, we designed a streamlined search process within 4 weeks for call center agents to book tours.

Then, we validated it would be beneficial to users via value testing to confirm that what we were building the right thing.

The Challenge

Role:

• UX designer - researched and designed throughout the entire UX journey

• Collaborated with UX director, UX designer, and UX researcher to ideate, create prototypes/scripts and incorporate feedback

• Collaborated with Product Owner and Developers to understand technical and business constraints

For: Company X, a S&P 500 tour company
Type: Rapid High-Fidelity Prototyping, Agile development, User Research, Workshop
Timeline: 3 months

Call center agents’ training needed to be cut in half from four weeks to two. The current length was due to agents having to memorize dozens of taped-together processes.

Also, due to limitations in the UI, they couldn’t answer routine customer questions without escalating to another team, causing frustration and longer training times.

Results

By the end of the project, we:

• Worked with the business and technical team to create a 4-month strategic roadmap to incrementally bring the prototype to life

• Created a persona to help the client team prevent scope creep and focus on solving for their persona’s needs

• Validated we were bringing value to users out of the gate by getting a high-fidelity prototype in front of them, with user ratings averaging 9/10 or more

Defining the Problem

Identifying business goals 

Through a 3-day business goals alignment workshop led by our Lead Designer Andy to kick off the project, we had cross-functional stakeholders vote on the most important business goals:

• Reducing call time by 30%

• Reducing travel partner call center reliance

• Reducing training time by 50%

Creating a Roadmap

Stakeholders then voted on the most important functionality, which informed the 4-month road map to incrementally implement search and booking features for agents.

User Research

Our team shadowed and interviewed a dozen agents total and interviewed 4 managers. I personally shadowed 4 agents and interviewed 1 manager.

Research Findings

1. The whole business’ processes revolve around the limitations of the software, not the other way around. The software is linear and rigid, but needs to support fluid interactions to match how calls are handled.

2. Information is out of date or lacks granularity, resulting in lost sales from unanswered customer questions

3. Information lives in 5 different places, resulting in inefficiencies switching between places like agent’s internal software, printouts on cubicles, and the consumer-facing website.

Persona Formation

John, our user researcher, created a persona from our collective research to prevent scope creep and help the client stay focused on alleviating Sara’s pain points.

Visualizing the Solution

Competitive analysis

We looked at competitors’ websites in the travel space to learn about the design patterns for search, helping us inform the order of the search fields and layout of the popovers.

Wireframing & Prototyping

The whole design team sketched out wireframes, which Amer and I used to create high fidelity designs in Sketch. 

The design was also influenced by the client’s consumer-facing website, since users preferred it over the software during their first step on calls: looking up itineraries.

In Sketch, I designed the menus, incorporated stakeholder feedback and animated the screens to prepare the interactive prototype for testing. 

User Testing

For testing, our goal was to test the high fidelity interactive prototype and validate we were bringing value to users as they searched for a tour.

John led think-aloud research sessions live with a cross-section of users who were represented by our persona, including managers. Amer, Andy, and I collaborated on the script, observed sessions, and jumped in to ask follow-up questions. 

Results

All 8 users responded positively to the new prototype. Their ratings averaged out to the following:

• Value when searching for a tour: 9.0/10

• Ease of use: 9.9/10

We are currently working with the client developers to ensure the design is implemented successfully and prototyping out the next step of the strategic plan, which is now advanced search.

Key Learnings

• Having stakeholders align on business goals during kickoff ensured the project had internal support, focus, and momentum

• Rapid prototyping and value testing ensured users would get immediate benefit from our designs

• Creating a persona based on user interviews, observations, and collaboration with managers ensured we knew who we were designing for