G.R.I.D.​
*In compliance with a non-disclosure agreement, sensitive information has been changed, redacted, or removed from this case study.
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Overview
GRID is a global innovation tool meant to track the value of the innovation pipeline ensuring the company is on path for long term strategic growth and to enable better innovation-related knowledge sharing across the organization. The users are top level marketing executives and mid-level managers. The tool is scheduled for release in all of the company’s six continents.
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Challenges
The major challenge of this project was that many aspects of the business process were not yet defined— as the company was simultaneously changing the innovation process. Typically, a design supports and mediates a business process. However, in this case our project team had to define and create aspects of business process, which were then used to create a design to standardize it globally. This was my first time defining business procedures on a global scale.
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​My Role
I was responsible for leading discovery, information architecture, business process definition, wireframes, data visualization, usability testing, and quality assurance testing.
Process
For the project kickoff, we familiarized the project team with the UX process. Once aligned, we conducted vision interviews with executive stakeholders, trying to understand business goals and key user tasks. The initial request was to improve a particular visualization (though discovery would later broaden this). We analyzed the discussion and derived our discovery research objectives. These objectives were used to build the discovery script.
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For the discovery, I moderated 15 interviews with finance and marketing users from 10 countries. We used affinity diagrams to map out the current innovation process as well as the surrounding user behaviors and attitudes. The output was an experience map and two personas. These deliverables helped us scope the minimum viable product (MVP). We then formulated our problem statement. At this point we realized the problem was a lot broader in scope than the initial request from stakeholders. Rather than improving a specific visualization, the real problem was more focused on giving visibility to the company’s long term innovation strategy.
Affinity Diagrams
Experience Map
Persona
Our team began brainstorming. After a few initial concept sketches, we began testing with users. I designed and moderated the studies. We were eventually able to converge on a design direction. We then saw the feedback improving and gradually brought it up to high fidelity prototype. In total, we tested with 24 users across 6 iterations. We continued to provide support to development to ensure designs were implemented correctly and conducted quality assurance checks on the application.
