Customer Research and UX design
Customer research | User Story Mapping | Product Definition | Developer handoff | Stakeholder Workshops | Design Sparring | User Testing | Wire-framing | Competitor Analysis
Note: New product and other sensitive information has been intentionally left out of this case study due to NDA
The Problem
Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunication provider is making a huge shift to being a digitally focused organisation. This means changing legacy systems, uprooting processes and ultimately updating their core product to reflect changing market demand.
One of the largest tasks in this transformation bringing their online store into the modern era by offering a seamless browsing experience and streamlined checkout.
The Goal
During this incredibly large and complex task, the customer can often be forgotten in place for rapid delivery and easy business outcomes.
Therefore it was necessary for me to be primary advocate for the customer by embedding human-centred design practices, methodologies and thinking into the product teams way of working. Ensuring that the new online platform is easy and intuitive whilst also meeting the rigorous business needs.
Overview
As a designer at Telstra you work hand in hand with the product team to deliver products and features in fortnightly sprints. This included extensive background research on industries and competitors to better understand the feature or product we were delivering, workshop and ideation facilitation, rapid prototyping and customer testing of designs and pioneering and leading a fortnightly design sparring ritual to encourage designers across divisions to share and gain feedback on others’ work.
Working in a large product team it was imperative to communicate and work collaboratively with visual designers, developers, product owners and business analysts to ensure consistent feedback and common understanding is gained.
Processes
User Story Mapping & Product Definition
A characteristic of working in an agile product team is that new features and priorities continually come into play. My role was to define, through information gathering from business units, competitor analysis and user testing how these individual features or stories will fit into the overall product flow, how this will look to customers and the impact to the business.
Through this we were able to rapidly prioritise, test and integrate customer centric features into the exploration and checkout flow, enabling a smoother experience for our customers.
Design Sparring & Workshops
Telstra's digitisation program consists of multiple teams working on projects which all impact and flow onto one another. Designers at Telstra have a large wealth of knowledge on the business and design, yet there was a lack of collaboration between project teams meaning this knowledge and problem solving capability was not being shared.
I pioneered fortnightly 'design sparring' sessions to encourage designers across teams and cities to share and give/gain feedback on their work as well as design jams for non-designers to give input and gain buy-in on designs. Ultimately, with the aim of increasing collaboration, reducing duplication of work and opening communication channels to share knowledge and help others solve problems.
User Testing & Collaborative Handoff
Monthly user testing sessions meant that the design of our product was constantly being updated and refreshed based on user requirements. Consistent collaboration with visual designers and developers through daily stand ups, sprint retrospectives, presenting user testing reports and working hand in hand with them was key to ensuring product delivery is accurate and met Telstra's high standards.
Outcome
My role as a product designer at Telstra oversaw the first and second releases of their new e-commerce store. By staying true to human centred design methodologies whilst maintaining empathy for other business units and their unique requirements, I ensured that this new product was delivered with customers at the forefront and business needs accounted for.
