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Bazaarvoice Insights
Details
Category
Research-driven UX Design
Time Frame
December 2018–June 2019
Role
Senior UX Designer
Researcher
What are Bazaarvoice Insights?
• Generated by applying business intelligence and/or pattern recognition to data.
• Attempt to go beyond the “what happened” to “why it happened” and when possible offer recommended action(s).
Business Problem
Our customers have always valued their access to their Bazaarvoice data. Continual customer requests include improved reporting content, flexibility, delivery, and actionability.
• Brand managers, merchants, retailers, advertisers, and executives struggled to find the strategic data they needed on an existing dated platform. The insights product helped to increase perceived value within client organizations.
• Insights afforded Bazaarvoice a competitive advantage. Competitors were unable to deliver similar functionality.
• When used correctly, acquired data delivers strategic value to clients and assists in negotiations for better data rights.
Client Service Directors Played A Key Role
• Relayed customer feedback on products Bazaarvoice built and maintained.
• Participate in research and discovery of new product opportunities.
Pain Points
• CSDs were forced to produce reports of strategic insight for clients manually.
• Customers struggled to find strategic data using existing, and dated dashboards.
Strategic Focus
• Retail Network and depth of data provided a competitive advantage.
• Competitors are unable to deliver similar functionality.
Business Process
Research & Prototype // External Usability Testing // Qualitative Feedback // Insights Pilot // Pilot Invitations // Pilot Analytics & Quantitative Research
Research
Notes & Sketches
• Early notes from planning sessions with product and development teams.
• Some tangible examples of customer insights data.
• Refined insights data lists.
Persona Documentation
Consolidated multiple, dated Bazaarvoice personas from Confluence into three primary personas. Added fresh details from usability interviews and a few hours of discussion with internal SMEs.
Internal Prototype Design
Internal Usability Interviews with internal Subject Matter Experts.
Hypothesize & Prototype
• Consolidated scattered persona documentation.
• Improved personas with empathy mapping exercises.
• Validated personas through collaboration with SMEs.
• Prototype informed by queries & recommended action(s).
• SMEs served as internal usability participants.
Bazaarvoie SME: Client Success Director (CSD)
Bazaarvoice CSDs help customers to develop better retail products, create engaging marketing and produce more inspired shopping experiences daily.
Key CSD Feedback on Internal Prototype
Provide more context with Recommended Action:
• When referencing a BV service, clarify for the customer if it's already set up.
• Connect the customer with their Account Director for all BV Sampling decisions.
• Knowledge base articles will only be useful if it's a self-service type of recommendation.
• Present a competitive case study and statistics with the recommendation to pay it off.
Report Summary
• The page would benefit from a more formal introduction and more direction at the top.
• Expected ability to view report data within the page, with an option to export if desired.
Overall
• Data visualization colors and charts will help clients process information faster
• Add icons for Questions & answers, Ratings & Reviews to provide a quicker read.
• The ability to share an insight with a colleague is really powerful.
• Can we add a brief onboarding experience for those who may use this app infrequently?
External Usability Testing
The User Experience Research team interviewed 18 participants, each of whom was a Bazaarvoice customer. Feedback from stakeholders and existing customers was collected via formal, external usability interviews.
Screenshot from external insights prototype; usability testing ran from February 26–April 3, 2019.
“The Insights prototype design was clean, modern, and much easier to use than workbench.”
— Lauren, J&J Baby Ratings & Reviews Management
Qualitative Feedback
• Prototype was very well-received and ranked highly.
• User Experience Research team consolidated findings.
• Stakeholders' feedback informed the design of our pilot.
Insights Pilot
Twenty-two Existing Bazaarvoice Customers Piloted the Insights Product.
Bose, L’Oreal, Adidas, Maybelline, UNIQLO, REI, Target, Macy’s, HomeDepot, Levi’s, 3M, Marriott International, Johnson & Johnson, and others.
Collaborated with data and engineering teams to build a pilot and set up quantitative tracking metrics using HEAP.
Pilot Invitations
Invitation requirements:
• Two users for a minimum of two to three hours, followed by a 30-minute phone call.
• Additional 30 minutes of use in the pilot experience each week.
• A 60-minute phone call at the close of the pilot.
Pilot Analytics & Quantitative Research
• Filter usage was high and supported engagement and conversion rates.
• Assumption: Grouping similar insights into collections may reduce cognitive load.
• Users ignored both insight statuses and states, removed in favor of simplicity.
• Overview page usage dropped quickly. Conversations indicated the content was not engaging.
• Penetration to Recommended Actions was very low. Visibility within the collections will improve access.
• The number of reports downloaded was very low. Presenting reports in-line, on the page was a recommended solution.
Business Solution
1. Adjusted Overview Page
2. Adjusted Card Structure
3. Adjusted Recommended Actions Page
Learnings
Looking back on the insights project work, the decision to skip exploration and move quickly into prototyping caused many issues for the team. The product owner wasn't afforded time to validate a question set. The information architecture of the product was very challenging to design with so many open questions about content and what insights the data team would be able to support.
Organizing, grouping, and labeling content to design a logical, and usable experience without an agreed, in-scope matrix of the data types and queries is very difficult.
The internal prototype and interviews provided key usability feedback. However external usability testing while useful was constrained by the limitations of time and availability of client data(in the prototype).
Also, issues with client catalog health and bugs associated with machine learning data slowed down our pilot build.
What Could Have Been Done Differently?
External usability feedback would have been much more actionable if the prototype content was better defined and pulled dynamically from spreadsheets containing actual client data. Often during the usability interviews, participants were forced to hypothesize as to what their insight data might look like in the prototype.
The speed at which the project was conducted significantly impacted the quality of the design process.
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