Stakeholder Workshops | Stakeholder Management | Competitor Analysis | Research | Customer User Journeys | Wireframe | Interactive Prototype | Usability Testing Facilitation | Customer Interviews | Guerrilla Testing | Design | Collaboration with core visual design and technologist teams  | Creative Direction

Define

An important call out was that a personalisation strategy formed a significant part of the Optus digital transformation. With this in mind, catalogue browsing was seen as an essential and pivotal area to give customers, either logged in or returning visitors an enhanced user experience.

A kick-off session was held with senior stakeholders and sponsors to identify 'What does success look like' and 'what are the barriers to success'. The stakeholders would write their comments on a Post-It and these would be arranged to display patterns and trends. They would then be further discussed and placed into a priority matrix, and voting would then commence, with stakeholders having three votes and putting their votes on what they believe is the key priority.

The output of this workshop was moving to create a 'How might we' statement. Post this session comments were digitised and synthesised and presented back to the group. The 'How might we' statement forward was:

Ideation

From the data gathered, when intent to purchase was present customers would browse for a mobile handset on desktop, as the larger screen experience allows for more details. And so it was for desktop view initial ideas were sketched out. I facilitated a co-design session where stakeholders included the ‘usual’ cohorts, program sponsors, members of relevant ‘business as usual’ teams and Optus shop associates. The initial concepts were then worked up as low fidelity paper wireframes. These wireframes, were 'guerrilla tested' with customers, as paper-based designs. After one round of feedback, the concepts were then explored further and iterated. The next round of ideas was then taken into Sketch, however still keeping with a low fidelity approach, as the team was still investigating the design protocol of showing devices.

A key learning from this latter exercise was that when displaying Apple products on a catalogue product page (the iPhone in this instance), devices have to be shown 'straight on' and not on an angle. This was a great learning exercise and ensured the team consulted all brand guidelines. This new found information excluded one of the first designs that were going to be put forward for testing. That concept may have passed our design reviews. However, the concept would have failed sign-off by the Apple brand guardian.

Future-proofing and re-imaging the catalogue browsing experience included personalisation, and concepts were worked on in the ideation sessions. For instance, messages would differ on the catalogue browsing home screen where the business knew who you were, e.g. a customer who was logged-in would see a 'Welcome back (your name)....' message.

The customer experience of catalogue browsing could be further enhanced with personalisation as analytics would be provided to detect previous visits or decisions made on the Optus site or in-store with a sales assistant, e.g. looking at a phone model or looking at accessories, these would be organised in order of frequency, importance and relevancy.

prototypes

After moving into low fidelity wireframes using Sketch, interactive prototypes were created using Invision for both mobile and desktop. Different scenarios and flows were built out in the interactive prototypes, based on customer feedback. One key area to capture when moving into 'Test & Learn' is the differences in behaviour when customers are on a desktop versus a mobile device.

Test and learn


The face-to-face interviews that were held in the second week of this three-week sprint included open-ended questions and task-based scenarios. These face-to-face sessions would aid the team to develop a deeper understanding of consumer thought processes regarding catalogue browsing and a layer of qualitative data to support design decisions on top of the quantitative data that was previously collected. Business stakeholders were encouraged to attend these sessions to observe first hand how their customers were interacting and reacting with the new look catalogue browsing experience.

When conducting the face-to-face interviews, rather than have a traditional facilitator and a scribe, the strategy was to make this process collaborative and inclusive. A process that brings the whole project team together, including stakeholders into one space to discover the customers' pain points. I facilitated the interviews; however, rather than a single scribe in the observation room, the whole team were involved.

The team would choose colour coded Post-It notes and write down their observations, quotes or actions by a participant in a concise manner. This 'swarming' activity was advantageous, especially when I was synthesising the findings, as it saved on time. From these informed decisions, I was best placed to make customer-centric evidenced-based UX design decisions. The feedback from these customer interviews was then used to update the mobile and desktop designs and flows. The new designs and digital experience resonated with users, who are very eager for this new experience to be launched.

Next steps

All files, including visual design, user interactions, component references and customer flows once signed off would then be placed in 'a drop' for the offshore development team. As this was working agile environment, the co-located development team of tech leads, front-end and back-end developers were part of this collaborative approach. This ensured there wasn't any confusion on what was expected to be delivered.

Summary

Due to Optus undergoing a design rebrand and digital transformation, the complete and updated catalogue browser experience as yet has not been launched. The rework undertaken affected the customer experience, user experience, design, code and now the updated Design Language System.

The updated branding has a modern, bolder and slicker feel about it, although still not released in all its entirety. The current live version does contain some of the customer experience insights that were identified in this project; however, again using the current (older) design system.

Outcomes

A more immersive catalogue browsing experience being applied to all of Optus’ catalogue experiences

Buy-in from senior stakeholders and injected a human-centred design approach to Optus teams

Introduction of the Optus Design Language System across Optus ecosystem

Uplifting skills of Optus teams in agile methodology

Customers (during the research phase) were genuinely excited and thrilled with the new immersive experience and gave the service high satisfaction scores.