Client Dashboard Participatory Design

Overview

A national software platform wants to further serve its users and their clients by building a client dashboard that facilitates collaboration and communication. Researchers have been planning and executing research projects with consumers to further understand their recent experiences. To support these researchers, I conducted a participatory design activity with users to ideate the consumer experience. This project highlights how I iterate and navigate sessions. Some information, including the product specifics, is redacted or altered for confidentiality.

Research Goals

  • Understand the information that is important to consumers from the users’ perspective

  • Understand what and how users share with their clients

  • Co-create the client experience with users

Research Methods

Ongoing consumer-focused generative research has provided the team with enough insights to ideate potential product requirements. For the next step, we decided to collaborate with our users in participatory design sessions to co-create the consumer experience together. We wanted to evaluate the hypothesis from the initial consumer research and get context to the other side of the collaboration.

We included a short interview portion to better understand the communication and information sharing between users and their clients. We followed up the interview with the participatory design activity using skeletons of the potential solutions as design guides. The research project included 1- hour sessions with users from various team sizes and markets.

Iterations

What didn’t go as planned and how did I adapt to it?

  • Although we provided skeletons of potential solutions to guide the conversation, it was still difficult for the participants to design a holistic consumer experience. This is because the product we’re creating is the first of its kind. To adapt, I separated each skeleton element and co-designed the consumer experience for each item. The participants were able to focus on being creative when I scoped the task down to smaller experiences.

  • The design skeletons were too…bare. We had hoped that the lack of context would encourage more freedom in the sessions but was proven incorrect when participants completely disregard the elements. Instead of relying on the skeletons to guide the co-design, I used them as examples to create a brainstorming session.

  • It became evident that the participants were more than consultants for this product, they’re also end-users. I shifted the focus on the participatory designs to include how the participant visualize their end of this experience when their clients are using the product.

Key Findings and Impact

Users collaborate with their clients in the style that makes the most sense to them. Users want to control what and when to share information with their clients on the backend.

  • Impact: Increased the prioritization of customization in information sharing and permission granting

Users find value in an element that promotes client education. When users are unavailable, this element continues to provide support by educating clients on the process and answering common questions.

  • Impact: Influenced product decisions by introducing a new feature

Users don’t want additional work; they want the product to integrate with their current workflow so they don’t need to repeat steps. The Client Dashboard relies on our enterprise users to advocate for its usefulness and to update it with information for their clients. Designing the Client Dashboard with their experience in mind will increase the adoption of this new tool.

  • Impact: Advocated for the importance of doing research with our B2B users while building for our B2C users. Further research validated this sentiment and more.