MVP Release - Users & Usecases
IBM ENVIZI - Scope 3 emissions management plg trial
The below study represents my own POV, and does not represent or indicate IBM's current or future product and business direction.
Participant details, key takeaways, revenue/metrics, and other confidential information have been redacted below for public preview.
MVP users & usecases were compiled from 1~ year worth of parallel discovery & development work, culminating in the initial launch of IBM's Emissions Management PLG experience.
Subsequent launch of live trial & MVP release in 2024 will feature research-derived buyer personas, high-value usecases, wrapped within multiple compelling narratives for sales enablement.
Subsequent launch of live trial & MVP release in 2024 will feature research-derived buyer personas, high-value usecases, wrapped within multiple compelling narratives for sales enablement.
In collaboration with cross-functional teams, proposed usecases were combined with other pressing research needs for concept testing.
I initiated & drove the co-creation of UI task flows for testing, blending in Kano prioritized features and existing & new capabilities under consideration from disparate product teams.
I initiated & drove the co-creation of UI task flows for testing, blending in Kano prioritized features and existing & new capabilities under consideration from disparate product teams.
Expert SMEs were re-recruited from past discovery interviews, reducing recruitment costs & ensuring continuity of context.
Participants were synthesized in phases for specific industry needs, with insights from concept tests & moderated interviews extracted across key product management question areas.
Participants were synthesized in phases for specific industry needs, with insights from concept tests & moderated interviews extracted across key product management question areas.
3 targeted user flows were created from scratch, leveraging existing & proposed feature/usecases under consideration.
Nuanced user scenarios & task instructions were created for each flow, and sessions were pre-configured by me in UserZoom to allow for easy coordination across distributed teams.
Nuanced user scenarios & task instructions were created for each flow, and sessions were pre-configured by me in UserZoom to allow for easy coordination across distributed teams.
Participant insights were sorted & synthesized by feature categories, allowing for engaged discussions with product management as proposed enhancements were assessed.
"how do min. esg data requirements affect user value propositions for customers at different points along their net zero journey?"
"IS [REDACTED]-DATA APPROPRIATE & VALUABLE ENOUGH AS A DIFFERENTIATED STARTING POINT FOR IBM'S TARGET ESG CUSTOMERS?"
"HOW MIGHT WE MOTIVATE CUSTOMERS TO START, GROW, AND EXPAND USE WITH OUR ESG SOLUTION STRATEGY?"
INITIAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS
"PRIOR TO THE ACQUISITION ENVIZI HAD LITTLE EXPERIENCE WITH DESIGN, MUCH LESS UX RESEARCH. YOU WERE PATIENT AND RESOURCEFUL IN YOUR APPROACH TO EDUCATING THE TEAM AND SHARING RESEARCH INSIGHTS..."
PRODUCT MANAGER, IBM SUSTAINABILITY SOFTWARE
"...brought YOUR EFFECTIVE & MUCH NEEDED UXR LEADERSHIP & pov..."
"...YOUR ABILITY TO ENTER TANGLED
OR MURKY SITUATIONS AND REMAIN UNDETERRED AT DRIVING CLEAR & ACTIONABLE RESEARCH OUTCOMES WAS ON FULL DISPLAY..."
PROGRAM DIRECTOR, IBM SUSTAINABILITY SW DESIGN
[Role]
project lead // researcher
[research team]
IBM DESIGN PRINCIPAL
scis ux design lead
scis sr. uxr
scis lead uxr
[proj. time]
4-6 weeks
[PRODUCT]
IBM ENVIZI ESG SUITE
ibm supply chain intelligence suite
IBM PLANNING ANALYTICS
[PUBLISHED]
2023
[WORK REQ. BY]
IBM SUSTAINABILITY SW LEADERSHIP
DIR. OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
SR. SCIS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
[audience]
ENVIZI PM TEAM
scis global pm team
ENVIZI DESIGN TEAM
scis design team
ibm design research org
IBM SUSTAINABILITY SW ORG
[FEATURED]
Q2 QUARTERLY DESIGN REVIEW
Q3 UXR TOWN HALL
[METHODS]
stakeholder workshops
KANO QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
EXTERNAL SME RECRUITMENT
MODERATED INTERVIEWS
concept testing
feature mapping
[DELIVERABLES]
keynote & global playback
hands-on annotated mural
as-is & to-be user experience journeys
usecase validation
design + product enhancements
uxr education material + sessions
STUDY overview:
As new product visioning workstreams exited discovery phases, there was increased urgency from IBM Sustainability LT to converge vision efforts and delineate MVP & 2024 priorities for development. In no small part influenced by growing client deals in pipeline, senior product leadership across IBM Supply Chain Intelligence & Envizi ESG Suite teams expressed the need for external validation on IBM Sustainability's Scope 3 strategy.
Being one of the halo products under IBM CEO's Product-Led Growth directive, there was a key emphasis on producing a compelling usecase-led experience with low barriers to entry; primarily minimum required data & cost for trial users.
Internally, there was a divide between product teams on the right approach for our Emissions Management strategy. Discovery research had identified a myriad of prioritized painpoints our technology could be poised to serve; however, which user stories needed to be prioritized to gain rapid market traction?
This final phase of S3C1 research efforts wove together insights from preceding studies, re-recruiting expert SMEs for interactive moderated interviews in-parallel with UI concept tests.
Insights were extracted against question areas from product management, with detailed summaries, contextual screenshots, and participant feedback. Research outputs have been leveraged in product enhancements, sales & marketing enablement, PLG trial launches, and multiple global UXR broadcasts.
approach & impact:
- Identified need for skunkworks internal vision to serve as reference hypothesis; used as springboard to help focus internal debates around target features & usecases
- Expanded initial skunkworks visions to accommodate 3 broad scenarios for validation, each representing separate sets of stakeholder priorities & POVs
- Past external SMEs re-recruited as part of sample; allowed for participants to remain in-context for concept testing, as well as leveraging previously collected role insights
- Testing scenarios were configured as UserZoom one-way mirror session; time-distributed researchers were provided testing scripts, tips & tricks, and user narratives to ease 24/7 testing for participants in difficult regions
- Priority industries to target were recommended by UXR; industry-specific insights were spliced across key question areas, with supporting screenshots & participant expertise shared to support enhancement recommendations
- Personas & participant insights used to launch multiple internal PLG initiatives, including recent launch of Emissions Management PLG; featuring the story of Rene, a Sustainability Analyst experiencing how Envizi can support her ESG responsibilities
- Research process & artifacts leveraged across multiple internal enablement channels, including UXR education, seller enablement, marketing sites & more.
IBM's Emissions Management PLG trial, launched in Q1 2024, follows the story of Renee, a Sustainability Analyst. The experience Renee walks through targets key painpoints in potential customer's ESG journey, with key features appearing intentionally to secure satisfaction & delight.
Emphasis was placed on showing how IBM's intelligent solution features could address key customer painpoints, directly relating ease of data capture quality with actionable ESG visualizations.
Throughout the MVP development process, UXR worked with vision steering committee to find opportunities to inject research insights. Research artefacts were generated on demand to serve stakeholder needs, including targeted recommendations report mapping to feature development areas.
Stakeholder engagement was maintained throughout, with extra effort placed in supporting asynchronous collaboration & synthesis across 5+ timezones.
Research updates were given inflight, with reduced slide fidelity + no scheduled playbacks in favor of 3-slide, 3-minute recorded video distributed across timezones.
Updates focused on key learnings with disclaimers, supporting metrics, and quote highlights. Researcher notes were provided to reduce message distortion across disparate teams.
Updates focused on key learnings with disclaimers, supporting metrics, and quote highlights. Researcher notes were provided to reduce message distortion across disparate teams.
In order to create desirable to-be experiences for customers, multi-user as-is journeys were created per industry, with digestible relationship diagrams, detailed step breakout slides, contextual participant quotes, and feature overlaps identified.
"...PER USUAL, TO SAY I'M IMPRESSED WITH THE QUALITY OF THE RESEARCH YOU CHURN OUT IS A MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT.
YOU'VE CONSISTENTLY STOOD OUT AS AN EXCEPTIONAL UX LEAD AND CONTINUE TO DELIVER HIGH-QUALITY INSIGHTS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO OUR PRODUCT ROADMAP...I ALWAYS KNOW I'M GOING TO WALK AWAY FROM ONE OF YOUR PLAYBACKS LEARNING SOMETHING NEW."
PRODUCT MANAGER, IBM ENVIZI ESG SUITE + SUPPLY CHAIN INTELLIGENCE
"...courageous research study design for scope 3 vision validation...you took calculated risks with the methodology, informed by your research expertise and in-depth understanding of both stakeholder groups...the link to business outcomes was heavily informed by your attentiveness to stakeholder needs & key knowledge gaps."
SCIS UXR Lead