New Product Concept Testing
Context
One of my first projects during my team on the Digital Business Automation team in Cloud and Cognitive Software involved getting feedback on the first iteration of Workplace, a system where business users can manage and complete all of their work. I was able to get a look at the first iteration of Workplace and provided feedback to the product at a very early stage.
The objective of the study was to use findings and insights presented in the current study to iterate on the next version of Workplace.
Tools: Invision
Method: Concept Testing
Participants: 5 Business Users, who perform administrative work
Timeframe: 1 month
Test Scenarios
In order to allow participants to interact with the prototype (a low-fidelity Invision mockup), we asked participants to walkthrough 4 scenarios:
General Impressions: You are a business worker, and your company has just bought a software called "Workplace" which is a single place where you can complete tasks generated from workflows. It is meant to serve business workers like yourself and managers. Envision that you just opened this software on your computer at the start of your workday.
Task 1: The business quarter is ending, and your manager has asked you that make sure all the approvals are on track to be completed by their due dates. Walk me through how you would group / organize your tasks so that you only see tasks that are related to approvals.
Task 2: Your company is looking upgrade their company workspace! As a result, your company has purchased new keyboards for all the employees to replace their current keyboards. Your manager wants you to check on the status of this order, which is a workflow titled: Procure to Pay. Walk me through walk me through how you would you locate the workflow titled: Procure to Pay. (results for Task 2 detailed below)
Task 3: Your manager has a project that she has assigned to you, to onboard new employees into your organization. This will require getting an approval and making sure the needed forms are uploaded. Walk me through how you would add a new workflow for this project.
Each scenario was created in collaboration with the design and product team in order to test key functions. In each scenario, I provided the team with the participant’s satisfaction with the designs, positive and negative themes of the prototype, and recommendations for improvement on feature iterations of the prototype.
Participants were asked to find the workflow above that was titled “Procure to Pay.”
The 9 participants rated their satisfaction with the workflow page on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being completely dissatisfied, 4 being neutral and 7 being completely satisfied.
✅ Positive Themes
Commenting section
Organized
Simple
Clear who to reach out to
Information is all in one place
Stages is helpful
Able to see who modified the workflow last
⚠️ Negative Themes
More explanation is needed on the functionality of the tool
The stages timeline looks confusing
Need more details pertaining on the workflow
No personal satisfaction in completing tasks
What people are saying
“I don't know what the recent comments mean. I didn't know. Is that my team or is that just for the reviewers?”
— Business Analyst at Accenture
“This doesn't tell me what's actual status of the product delivery. Is the payment of the keyboards going to start when the payment is completed? Is it going to be done in installments?"
— Project Manager at John Deere
“I am so used to moving tiles around [in GitHub]. I want to get that personal satisfaction of moving something from one column to the next.”
— Program Manager at IBM
Readout
A readout was delivered to the team that highlighted findings and recommendations to the Workplace team.
As the product was pre-launch, many of the design recommendations could be implemented quickly on Invision mockups. Larger-scale recommendations were placed on PM’s feature roadmap.
Before recommendation
After recommendation