Phone System Discovery Research
Our client needed to update a collection of internal softwares related to their phone and reservation systems. My colleague and I were tasked with discovering a deeper understanding of the existing systems, and how they might be improved.
Our Discovery Process
Over the course of six weeks, we conducted 7 discovery interviews with 5 stakeholders and 2 employees who worked closely with the systems. Then, we took a closer look at the systems in a deep-dive interview, where an employee screen-shared and walked us through their daily experience with the systems.
Discovery Interviews
In our discovery interviews, we asked questions that aimed to gather both a broad understanding of the company and the employee experience, as well as detailed feedback on the existing system’s strengths and weaknesses.
Deep Dive Interview
After our series of discovery interviews, we identified a need for a more thorough understanding of the Systems’ UI. Much of what our findings were describing referred to very specific design and functionality flaws, so we wanted to see, first-hand what those looked like.
Our deep dive interview consisted of over an hour long discussion about the company’s call system and reservation system. The employee that we spoke to spent the meeting screen sharing and walking us through every detail of the interfaces.
The most surprising part of this interview was seeing the amount of clutter, redundancy and obsolete functionality that overwhelmed the user flow through their system. It was interesting to see the employee share details that were incredibly flawed in a very matter-of-fact way. It was clear that they had been using these systems for so long, they had grown complacent and didn’t realized just how many improvements could be made.
Interview Synthesis
With our interviews complete, we imported our notes into Miro and sorted them into a chart. This sorting process intended to identify the patterns in what different interviewees were saying, while visually representing the amount of quotes and notes we had for each topic.
Following this, within each section we grouped notes based on what they were saying. This enabled us to write Key Finding statements that encompassed every important point made across the interviews and identify Future Opportunities that went beyond the scope of the project.
Outline of Research Findings
With our Key Findings and Future Opportunities identified, we went on to outline our research in a way that addressed the client’s needs while revealing the nuances of the employee experience and how they impact the success of the company’s systems and services.
Each key findings that fell under the same topic, like their call system, UX/UI, or the Employee Experience, were listed with the “Things to maintain” to the left and the “Things to Improve” to the right. Each topic was grouped into larger sections that were used to structure our Research Readout Presentation.
As you can see, there were significantly more things to improve than to maintain. This meant we needed to strategize the best way to deliver this information while uplifting the client and respecting the past work that our company provided. We worked to frame each “thing to improve” in a way that emphasized how that improvement would positively impact their employees and their clients, keeping the focus on their potential for growth rather than emphasizing the things that were “wrong” or “bad”.
With all of our research findings synthesized, we created a final Research Readout to deliver to the client. For an in-depth look at our research, check out our presentation!
Reflection
This project was an interesting investigation of a system’s functionality and design that uncovered areas of improvement that far exceeded the scope of the project. Taking a human-centered approach to discovery has a tendency to reveal a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of problems that aren’t always able to be solved. As a UX Researcher, it is exciting to be able to recognize how and why a system or design is flawed, but the reality of acting on those research findings is a lot more complex than it should be. Going forward, I would love to apply this depth of a discovery to a project that values the human-centered approach and understands how quick, simple improvements that streamline a redundant, dysfunctional interface can be incredibly valuable.