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Designing for Business and Users: Finding the Perfect Blend. Erin Smith Convergys Corporation Erin.e.smith@convergys.com. Convergys at a Glance. Enabling organizations to enhance the value of their relationships with customers and employees. Solutions and Service Offerings.
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Designing for Business and Users: Finding the Perfect Blend Erin SmithConvergys CorporationErin.e.smith@convergys.com
Convergys at a Glance Enabling organizations to enhance the value of their relationships with customers and employees Solutions and Service Offerings • Customer Care, Human Resources, Billing Services • Solutions, Software, Outsourcing, Consulting Worldwide capabilities • Industry Strengths Include: Financial, Communication, Consumer Package Goods, Technology, Health Care, Retail, Pharmaceutical • 73 contact, service and data centers worldwide • Over 575 clients in 70+ countries Leading public company • Listed on NYSE, S&P 500, Fortune 1000 • A Fortune Most Admired Company for seven consecutive years • $2.8 billion in revenues
Agenda • Your Role as A Designer • Who You Talk To • Data You Collect • Defining Your Users • Questions
Your Role as a Designer • Don’t just take hand-me-downs • Make sure YOU understand what’s expected from the business • Make sure YOU understand the requirements on both the business and user ends • Make sure YOU ask about what may not make sense to you • Business Requirement Decisions are made because ‘that’s how it’s always been done’. • YOU can use these tools to fight your battles • But pick those battles carefully
What You Need The VUI Design Tool belt
Who To Talk To? • VP’s • Who funded the project? • Get expectations first hand • Technical experts • Database experts • Business analysts • Current system experts • Marketing team • They’ve done a lot of work on creating a brand, so why would you try to create your own? • Determine where some marketing lingo came from, and should you use it in your system?
Who To Talk To? • Call center representatives • They talk to these people every day • They are such a HUGE asset to your project… • The success of the design • The success of the deployment • Who’s using your system • Conduct interviews even before design begins
What Do You Ask For? • Stats, stats, and more stats • Current system statistics • Current calls to agents • Drop out rates • Current customer satisfaction statistics/survey results • Actual calls • Listen first hand to how tasks are conducted with a representative • Collect enough from a general line, and you can get a picture of task percentages • Marketing data • Commercials • Logos
What Do You Ask For? • Service channel information • Websites • Will functionality mimic what’s available on the site? • Have someone step you through the site • Ask for a test account to go and test it out on your own • (Find out what you think is intuitive, etc) • Service branches? • Does everyone follow the same procedures when conducting specific tasks? • Retail stores • How are items sold and promoted?
What Do You Ask For? • Company information • The more you can find out the about the company, the better • Organizational charts • Current financials • Competition • Competitive pricing strategies • Mission and Vision • User information • Marketing usually knows who/how they need to market • So use that data to your advantage • Demographic data • As much details as you can get because we’ll want to build the following…
Defining Your User • Take out the word ‘user’ when defining who’s calling • Example…
Defining Your User • Scenario: • Blackberry Product Development Team has decided that they want to put a lot of money into building new features for their next device • They need to determine that based on their primary user(s) building all these enhancements will really pay off and bring more loyal customers
Defining Your User (cont) • So they define the user based on demographics • Gender: Female • Age: 25 – 40 • Geographic Location: Texas • Education: Bachelors of Science • Income: >$40,000
Defining Your User Can you build a system based on these specific pieces of data?
Defining Your User • Let’s ask more questions – Erin • Hobbies: hiking, photography, • Marital status: married, no kids • Magazines: Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Money • Primary uses for the Blackberry: email, phone calls, maybe an occasional visit to mapquest.com
Defining Your User • Let’s ask more questions – Sarah • Hobbies: building computer programs to make her life easier, building web sites • Marital status: married, 2 kids • Magazines: Wired, MacWorld • Primary uses for the Blackberry: transferring data to other Blackberry users, getting info on the web, emails and phone calls
Defining the User • Why this is beneficial • As you see in this example, it helps determine requirements for a specific product (system) by having a deeper understanding of who that user is • It can help in usability studies • You tested 7 ‘Sallys’ and 5 ‘Jims’ • These become living and breathing things that take on a life of their own. • Don’t let them die after requirements, continue to use them during development, enhancements, etc • It creates a focus point to bring everyone on the team to once place (What would Sally do?)