Persona Workshop
A persona-centered design workshop to shape strategic product decisions.
Context
Qualtrics acquired a behavioral analytics tool capable of passively collecting data on employee sentiment. A compliment to the core offering, self-reported data via survey, our goal was to understand where in the end-to-end user journey the behavioral analytics tool could be best integrated. To do so, my UXR partner and I held a two-day workshop with stakeholders in product management, methodology, design, and engineering to align on scope, concepts, and next steps.
My input
Discovery 💡
• Review business objectives and market opportunity decks
• Define what “success” looks like
Workshop design 📐
• Design a workshop to meet end goals
• Create interactive workshop artifacts
Outcomes 〰️
• Lead cross-functional workshop
• Secure alignment with senior stakeholders
• Develop and synthesize concepts from the workshop into core deliverables
• Align with product and engineering on roadmap planning
Discovery 💡
Our objective was to deepen our understanding of how existing manager tools (surveys) and behavioral analytics tools can better support managers throughout employee experience management. To do that, we reviewed user research insights.
Our key working assumptions:
• All managers struggle with listening for feedback, trusting the feedback they receive, understanding if their feedback is actionable, and tracking the impact of their actions.
• Managers believed behavioral analytics tools are helpful for synthesizing data, surfacing relevant insights and directing actions
• Behavioral analytics has the potential to support the relationship between productivity and well-being through detection, intervention and prevention.
• Trust is an essential component. If the data is skewed, trust will be undermined.
Our proto-personas:
• All managers
• Managers of managers
• Novice managers
Workshop design 📐
First, my UXR partner and I determined our key workshop questions:
• Where are we already well supported?
• Where do pain points overlap and converge across personas?
• Where can behavioral analytics support managers?
• Where is it worth identifying more resources and time?
• What are product concepts?
To answer the first three questions, we collaborated on an end-to-end journey map view of the three proto-personas. The journey map detailed the persona’s needs, project support moments, and pain points. This exercise helped us understand where we were supported, where needs coverage and how behavioral analytics can support specific persona needs. Then, we designed a modeling activity for the participants. The modeling activity further revealed consistent and reoccurring pain points — and how behavioral analytics could support them. These pain-points became the basis for concept generation.
Excerpt from modeling activity:
Review the journey map and work with your small group to identify:
How do you see a behavioral analytics integration impacting your specific proto-persona?
What are there specific features or components?
Are there potential blockers, frictions, or risks?
Are there any more areas that need investigation?
Then, generate a set of problems to solve to inform concept ideation.
Artifacts: Workshop • Journey map • Workshop data
Outcomes and concepts 〰️
One of the outcomes of our activity was stakeholder alignment problem area prioritization. We aligned on three problem areas to prioritize for investment: impact and tracking, data certainty, and guidance. These themes became the basis for product concept generation.
We held a convergent and divergent thinking exercise around these problem areas to generate high-priority product concepts. We asked:
• How might we deliver the ideal experience for a manager looking to feel confident in their data?
• How might we deliver the ideal experience for a manager looking to get guidance and support for EX management?
• How might we deliver the ideal experience for a manager looking to see the impact of their actions?
Finally, we analyze the workshop concepts and group feedback for prioritization and next steps.
The workshop informed the product concept, Autumn. Please take a look at the case studies for more details.
Artifacts: Product concepts
Team
Claudia Martinez, Rose Schneider, Courtney Davis Melody Wu
Role
Co-UX Lead with Rose Schneider, UXR
Stakeholders
Product Management, Engineering, UX Leadership