Scaling an enterprise tool
that allows users to create
in-app guides 🌱

Background

The creation extension serves as the primary creation platform for clients, empowering them to craft step-by-step guides, "i" icons featuring tips, pop-ups, and a range of other informative aids on top of their base application. While the tool excels in its capabilities, I was tasked to enhance its scalability, enabling users to accomplish the majority of their essential tasks while ensuring a smoother user experience.

The problem

Customer feedback indicates they lack confidence in finding assistance, information, or completing tasks due to inconsistent and unpredictable workflows. with numerous starting points and steps in the current products. Even expert users find our solution overly technical, constantly switching between creation tool and dashboards. Users frequently navigate multiple windows, and struggle to locate their work, leading to confusion and concern. This experience heightens the risk of irreversible mistakes, necessitating heavy reliance on tools for support.

We create a new entry point for each major solution

These entry points need to scale better and create a disjointed experience since users have to navigate multiple views to complete their work.

Lifecycle of content in the current journey:

Create content (creation tool) → Edit and manage content (dashboard) → Test content (creation tool) → Push content live (dashboard) → Analyze live data (dashboard)

What the creation tool and dashboard looked like:

Introducing Whatfix Studio Content Lifecycle Management

The 'before' state of the Whatfix Studio creation tool — The Whatfix Studio panel, the primary creation interface.

The 'before' state of the Whatfix dashboard — The dashboard view for managing content.

Additionally, our analysis revealed a concerning trend: roughly 13% of our potential sales were lost to competitors because prospective buyers perceived the tool’s appearance as outdated. Addressing this issue was also a priority as we aimed to enhance the overall user experience.

Solution

The vision for the tool is to provide a unified, contextual panel that gives people access to a growing set of tools in the context of the application where they are working. That way, they can get their work done from one place without having to switch around or try to remember where to go to complete their tasks. This would:

Provide a scalable UI for a growing set of tools people will use to create, manage, analyze, and engage with guidance, content, and associated features.
Reduce the number of entry points people use to begin a task so that things are more predictable for them.
Use a responsive design that will work across multiple form factors so that our solutions can work across devices and so that people can complete their tasks in the context of their work.

This would mean:

Implementation of a novel left-side navigation system, enabling users to seamlessly switch between tabs to fulfil diverse tasks within different contexts.
Increase the creation tool’s height to occupy the entire viewport height.
Ability to expand the tool for tasks that require more space.
Introduction of a fresh mechanical navigation scheme, including features like lateral movement, expansion options, and more.
Overhaul of the user interface for landing pages to provide a rejuvenated visual experience.

Solution: Create Flow — Unified creation flows.

Solution: Manage, Collaborate, Analyze — Manage, collaborate, and analyze in one place.

Solution: UI Specs — Detailed UI specifications for the new navigation.

Solution: Workspace Switcher — Easy workspace switching.

Solution: Expanded View — An expanded view for more complex tasks.

Solution: Panel Options — Intuitive panel controls.

Solution: Panel Overlay — The panel overlays the host application contextually.

Solution: Full Width Table — A full-width view for detailed data management.

Impact

Now, the creation tool is poised to grant users access to 80% of the (JBTD) Jobs-to-be-Done) throughout their journey.

This revamped experience is projected to slash the necessity to switch between the dashboard and the creation tool by an estimated 80%.

What our users are saying

Customer quote about quicker creation flow

Customer quote about editing flows on the go

Customer quote about insights and analytics

How design added value

Identify the problem statement by analyzing customer inquiries and data from NPS and Productboard (PB).
Collaborate with stakeholders to define Key Results (KRs) and articulate how these contribute value and enhance the product/experience quality.
Gain clarity on Jobs-to-be-Done (JBTD) regarding the creation tool versus the dashboard by addressing customer inquiries.
Address already present minor issues while redesigning the experiences.
Ensure the project aligns with both current and future Key Results (KRs) to avoid wasted effort.

How I got there

As this project is signed under NDA, contact me at adithkvn@gmail.com

Broadly, the following steps were undertaken:

Conducting customer discovery to comprehend pain points and behaviour.
Creating initial concepts to integrate management, collaboration, and analytics within a unified space, followed by evaluating concepts based on their respective advantages and disadvantages.
Conducting concept testing to assess the viability and reception of the chosen concept.
Integrating feedback from both customers and stakeholders.
Elaborating on the user experience and addressing any oversights.
Conducting usability testing using the System Usability Scale (SUS).
Implementing feedback and testing any new conceptual changes.
Finalizing the visual design.

Challenges experienced

Recruiting customers across diverse personas and experiences for user testing and discovery proved challenging, significantly impeding the project's progress.
Due to its expedited nature, this project focused primarily on addressing immediate problem statements, leaving some unresolved issues within the current product experience unattended. Ideally, mitigating existing product and design debt before scaling up would have minimized risks.
Not all developers participated in sync-ups and meetings due to their involvement in other concurrent projects. This fragmented involvement prolonged hand-offs and led to varying opinions on design from a development perspective.
Adhering strictly to components in the design system meant sacrificing potential improvements in certain areas of the experience. Despite this, we maintained this approach to uphold development velocity.

What could have been better

Pre-recruiting handpicked customers as soon as we were clear on the problem statement and alternating between them while discovery and user testing
Identifying and solving pre-existing issues in the journey before starting this project off
To facilitate smoother communication with developers, enhance our update documentation, allowing them to engage with designs and provide feedback. Utilizing Confluence for this purpose proved ineffective as stakeholders often lacked the time to review lengthy documents.
Dedicate time to collaborate with the design system team, focusing on the development of future components with promising potential.

Learnings

This project marked my introduction to the process of design-driven projects making their way onto the roadmap by aligning Key Results (KRs) with objectives. Since then, I've integrated this practice into my approach to roadmap creation, particularly as I began leading one of the platform teams where defining KRs can be complex.
It was the first instance where I conducted concept testing before committing to concrete development. This departure from previous practices, which involved shipping MVPs based on hypothetical problem statements and refining based on customer feedback, represents a shift towards a more proactive approach. This not only reduces costs associated with potential mistakes but also minimizes the need for extensive changes and development.
Handling stakeholder interactions at the highest level during this project taught me valuable skills in presentation and leadership, recognizing the significance of their limited time.
Collaborating with fellow designers and researchers within my organization enhanced my proficiency in visual design and usability testing, providing assistance and guidance when needed.

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