IBM Digital Business Group (DBG), Digital Offering Funnel
Case Study
Date: 2019
Role: Lead UX Designer
Team: IBM Chief Digital Officer, Chief Information Officer - Marketing, Business System Analysts, Release Managers, DBG Offering Manager for Analytics, additional Offering Managers, Product Manager, Engineering, Agile Transformation Consultant, Visual Designer, QA, Development
Skills: User Experience Design, User Experience Architecture, Information Architecture, Reporting and Analytics Design Research
Tools/Platform: Trello, Jira, Sketch, Invision, Pearl, Dundas, Carbon Design System
Project Process: Agile Scrum Hybrid
Website: www.ibm.com (Actual website is not available to the public)
Product Overview
The Digital Offering Funnel is an enterprise tool that provides insights into the discoverability, lead generation and orders generated from IBM offerings as part of a digital business model. The dashboard provides high-level management views as well as deep-dive insights to recognize top performing offerings and areas of investment. It includes KPIs to follow the customer journey from visits and page engagement through responses, sales chats, trials, orders, and wins.
Project Description
I was brought on to the Digital Business Group as the first Lead UX Designer to redesign and expand their current enterprise Digital Offering Funnel and scale out their Digital Offering Reporting and Analytics capabilities. I reported directly to the Product Owner of DBG Analytics which was a new position.
Project Background
A previous minimal version of the Digital Offering Funnel was recently created and launched without any needs analysis discovery work being done. The overall business and user experience strategy was overlooked and there was no design team included on the project.
Challenges
The Analytics team had never worked with a UX design team before and they expected me to start wireframing on day 1
There was a 3 month timeframe which did not leave any time for UX discovery work
I was brought on to the project just after executive level Design Thinking workshops were conducted, so I did not have an opportunity to participate
The large list of high-level requirements and documentation from the workshops still needed considerable discovery work to determine the metrics involved, the measure of success for each metric, and to better understand, organize, and prioritize them for the targeted users
Decisions were not made yet what on what reporting platform was to be used (Dundas, Tableau, or custom built) and each would have its own design, technical, and data limitations
Directed to create the visual look of the IBM Carbon Design System on a reporting platform that had minimal UI design customization
Requirements from Executive Management, Marketing Leads, and Offering Managers were constantly in flux
Many of the requirements did not have available data to use for the tool, but I would not be informed of that until later in the process
A large part of the metrics and how they were represented and used was foreign to me, so I had to push to get full explanations and definitions for everything
Many of the business groups for the offerings did not have a measure of success
Approach and Solution
Understanding the problem (What are we trying to design and why)
The initial goal of the project was to build an E2E (end to end) reporting funnel. The current reporting sites that did exist were in multiple areas, on different platforms (Dundas and Tableau), and did not cover the full span of metrics and KPIs needed.
Short and Long-term goals
The short-term goal was to design an E2E reporting funnel at the discovery level for Marketing Leads and Offering Managers. It would include a prominent clear visual measuring the performance of each stage of the funnel and categorize the expanded scope and functionality of KPIs and metrics into six main areas: Visits, Responses, Trials, Leads, Wins, and Orders. The redesign would also include a more intuitive UX layout and labeling for all component areas and the incorporation of the IBM Carbon Design System.
Additionally, if possible in the MVP 1 timeframe, they wanted to also create a summary level dashboard for executives and geography leaders to gauge the overall health of the portfolio.
The long-term goal was to increase the scale of the global filters add more local filters, add drill down diagnostic level reporting capabilities for Data Analysts, add in additional KPIs and metrics that weren’t available in the data model for MVP 1, possibly add in churn metrics or a separate churn funnel, and adding in separate areas for visits, opportunities, platform, and NPS sections.
Users
Summary Level
Executives/Project Office (part of DBG that reports to Bob Lord, IBM CDO)
Geography Leads
Drive strategy by gauging the success of the portfolio
Diagnose health of the business
Discovery Level (Funnel)
Marketing leads
Offering managers
Use funnel to optimize campaign performance and efficiency
Diagnose weak spots in the conversion stages for digital offerings and exploit success areas
Diagnostic Level
Data Analysts
Exploit successes and understand gaps
Existing site or application
The existing funnel design that was recently launched was lacking in key needed metrics, data and functionality. It had a confusing interface, unattractive design, and did not provide the analytics the Executive Office users needed to present regularly.
There were also other reporting sites that were used to gather different information for the user reports. Here are some examples:
EXISTING DESIGN
WEB PAGE KPIs
DIGITAL OFFERING PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
Design and technical limitations/restrictions
Since this was a web application, we were directed by standards to use the Carbon Design System. At first, we were told we could fully design in carbon and that the reporting platform would be custom built so it could use the carbon designs.
Later that direction changed. We were then told that we needed to use either Dundas or Tableau. After doing research on the design and functionality of both and consulting with the development team, it was decided to use Dundas.
However, Dundas had minimal UI customization available and, in some cases, did not have the data visualization types that carbon had. To understand the design and technical limitations I researched everything I could from the https://www.dundas.com/ website and worked very closely with development on each element in the design.
Discovery and requirements that have already been done
There was an initial list of draft requirements from Design Thinking workshops that were conducted before I came onto the project.
DESIGN THINKING WORKSHOP NOTES
Existing metrics and user feedback
We had some minimal user feedback on the recently launched funnel and sections of other reporting tools being used that were the most useful.
Requirements gathering and flushing out existing requirements
I analyzed the initial requirements from the workshops and conducted multiple meetings and brainstorming sessions over the course of a few weeks with Project Office (Executive Management), Marketing, Release Manager, and Product Manger to better understand the organization of each section, and how it would be used. I then worked hand-in-hand with the Product Manager to prioritize each section, and it’s KPIs to determine which would be part of the MVP launch and which would be in later phases. This led to the creation of an excel requirements document with categorizing and prioritizing the KPIs for the funnel section and the filtering facets per section and KPI.
DIGITAL OFFERING FUNNEL REQUIREMENTS
Sketching and draft ideas from team
At this point as the requirements were becoming finalized, we were given some draft design ideas by the by upper level executives and Product Manager.
SPEEDOMETER/GUAGE IDEA
DRAFT FUNNEL LAYOUT IDEA
Competitive and Design Research
While we were working through understanding and flushing out the MVP requirements, I started doing research on metric reporting dashboards in general and on the functionality, design, and type of data visualizations available to us in the Dundas reporting platform, and how they would match up to the Carbon Design System. We were being told that the developers could just skin the Dundas UI to look like Carbon but after further research and meetings with the dev team we realized it made more sense to find a middle ground between the two reporting/design systems that would be more likely to be implemented.
I also iterated on some gauge/speedometer ideas to handle the visualization for the top, middle, and bottom reporting of the funnel overall success.
DUNDAS DASHBOARD SAMPLES
DRAGONWELL
CTT WIRELESS
IT MONITORING
COMPETITIVE AND FUNCTIONAL RESEARCH
IBM MARKETPLACE
IBM MARKETPLACE (FACETED FILTERS)
IBM PRODUCTS
IBM W3 (INTRANET)
DELL
BESTBUY
VANS
BLUEFLY
MY GUAGE/SPEEDOMETER RESEARCH AND DRAFT IDEAS
Design
At this point I was ready to start wireframing. The main areas that needed to be worked out for the wireframe were the top speedometer area, multifaceted filter, getting started introduction and help overlays, the layout, and data visualization for each metric category (Visits, Trials, etc.). We also knew that requirements and the organization of the metrics within the funnel kept changing so we needed to take a module approach to make sure sections could be rearranged and moved to other areas of the funnel if needed.
Wireframe were created in Sketch and then passed to the Visual Designer to take over the file. Since there were many design iterations and requirements changes the file got passed back and forth multiple times so the end product is a combined file both worked on by UX and Visual Design.
GETTING STARTED MODAL
DEFAULT SCREEN
TOOLTIPS
GLOBAL FILTERS
NET PROMOTER SCORE (NPS)
LOCAL FILTERS
QTD ORDERS AND FUNNEL PERFORMANCE TABLES
SLIDER CHARTS
Q&A
After the funnel was in development, I also conducted extensive Q&A to make sure the designs and functionality were as close to the specifications we provided as possible. In some cases, on the fly redesigns were needed due to unforeseen technical limitations.
Summary
The launch of the MVP of the Funnel took 4 months. At the end of that period Digital Offering Funnel that was live was tested by users and iterated on based on their feedback. Additional areas of the funnel were then scaled out to include a Summary, Visits, Opportunities, and Platform tab as well as expanded drill down diagnostic level functionality for each area. This new reporting design was used as a template for another reporting tool called QTM (Quote to Marketplace) that was available within the same overall framework.
SUMMARY DASHBOARD DESIGN
Client Testimonials and Feedback
“The performance is SO much quicker and perfect for our business needs...Just wanted to say...what an outstanding piece of work from the team.”
“I love this slide!”
(comment while Digital Offering Funnel was presented in company wide meeting)
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