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Lucy is an integrated data application platform for the American Express ecosystem, providing developers with data and application abstractions to simplify product development effort while satisfying complex enterprise requirements.
Data Application
User Experience Research & Strategies
As stated in the Lucy Project, the UX research and design process was still in a very early stage when I initially joined the team. This section will focus on how we gradually established the UX design and research processes from scratch and how we addressed the problems and challenges.
I had helped lead the process of developing user experience design and research principles to help guild our workflow:
Research Goal and Methodology
Key research questions and areas:
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What are notable behaviors, preferences, pain points, and technologies that impact the usage of the application?
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Discover hidden user needs and new opportunities to inform the product feature planning strategy
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Observe and understand how current users utilize Lucy to finished their daily work
Methodology
2-3 weeks of deep study was conducted initially. On-going surveys have also been sent out after quality researches to iterate on the research result. Study participants were from various target customer/user groups.
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Phase 0: Understand and collecting data from previous surveys and user feedback
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Phase 1: An hour of contextual interviews with 5 participants from different targeted user groups
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Phase 2: Surveys had been sent out regularly to gather data from the target user groups
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Phase 3: One to two hours of group interviews with selected customer groups to observe and understand their behaviors and preferences
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Phase 4: A/B testing and usability testing for validation
Data analysis methods like cohort analysis, factor analysis, and sentiment analysis had been used in all the above phases.
Challenges and Responsibilities
Challenges and opportunities
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Limited resources and support for UX research - User research and study were not been emphasized within the initial team.
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Planning - Tight Timeline and lack of established research process lead to the aggressive scope of research and design work in given timeframes.
Role and responsibilities
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Strategic Planning to allocate resource for UX research - Partnered with 1 project manager and 1 product owner to put together the initial proposal and plan of UX Research
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Research and Data Analytics - Utilize quality and quantitive research methods to understand user needs and behaviors. Conduct individual interviews and group interviews with users from various background and extract valid information from collected data
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Develop and Iterate research methods - Collaborate with engineers and data architectures to create long-term solutions and short-term solutions to balance business requirements and tech limitations
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Presentation & Data Visualization - To present the result from the research project and demonstration the process of the conducted research, presentations have been given to show key stakeholder insights collected from user groups.
Strategy & Framework
Before starting the actual work,
Gathering Support via Proposals
After working on the project for a while, I have realized that there is no solid design process established within the team. Through working with the project manager and the product owner, we have put together the proposal to gather support and needed resources from business stakeholders to conduct the UX Study.
The proposal contains 4 main sections:
1. What is the user experience research and design iteration?
2. Why does Lucy need a UX research and design iteration?
3. How to incorporate UX research and design iterations into the existing workflow?
4. Potential Solutions: Long Term Solutions & Short Term Solution
To ensure the success of UX study, we have conduct workshop along with storyboard to show both external stakeholders and internal team members why we need UX study.
The goal of UX study is to
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provide Lucy users with a streamlined, efficient workflow process
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provide more context for workflow management
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build Lucy as the product that service various use cases
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establish the transparency between Lucy users and Lucy platform.
UX study has not only been conducted at the beginning of the design process but along with the entire design process.
Why UX Study?
Research Framework
A draft framework was established before we started to collect data. As we collected more data, both analysis and research menthods had been refined and imroved to ensure valid results.
Research Execution
Observations, interviews, survey, and documentation
Data Collection
Contextual inquiries/interviews and multiple surveys have been conducted to identify current user pain points. Use cases have been defined based on the information we have collected from the UX study.
Cohort analysis, Factor analysis, Sentiment analysis
Data Analysis
Various methods had been used to identify pain points and unsatisfied needs. Outcomes of this analysis had been translated into a business recommendation to implement incremental changes of existing features as well as new features.
Snapshots of some working in progress spreadsheets
Pain points and potential needs analysis
As shown in the below table, the frequencies of complaints/requests that mentioned by targeted audiences are color-coded. As the color goes lighter, a smaller amount of audiences have made the same complaint/request. All complaints and new requests listed in the top left box are those that had been mentioned most frequently by the target audiences.
Similarly, the above table shows how frequently an existed feature/function has been used. As the color goes lighter, the usage of listed features decreases. Features/functions listed in the top left box are those that had been used most frequently. They are project setting, derivation, and workflow. This helps us understand which existed features/functions worth the effort to improve since team bandwidth is limited.
Business Recommendations
Presentation
After analyzing data collected from users, business stakeholders, and engineers, demo and presentation has also been given.
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Solutioning
Backend Diagrams
Balance Business Goals with Implementation Realities
Whenever delivering a new feature, we need to ensure it will work smoothly with existing components. After initial review and discuss about information architecture and user flow, I have also worked with both UI developers and backend developers to go through the technical diagram to prevent potential failure during implantation.
Meanwhile, I work with tech leads to assist them in visualizing those backend diagrams to reduce the miscommunication between engineers and to explain the technology to our business stakeholders.
Sample of user flow diagram
(To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, this image has been treated blur on purpose.)
Sample of Lucy Components, Execution, and Service Diagrams
(To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, this image has been treated blur on purpose.)
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