Integration Templates Provide Unexpected Time-to-Value for Customers

CLIENT Hardware and software company

SERVICES Problem Discovery, Prototype Creation, Product-Market Fit, Product Development and Creation, Facilitation

TOOLS User research interviews, user story maps, user story facilitation, competitive research

BACKGROUND One of the client’s products is a digital integration platform that customers use to connect and share data between different software products in order to facilitate a variety of business functions.

In order to encourage customers to purchase more integration platform features (and lead to customer expansion), the client wanted to test the idea of enabling customers to “bundle” together several integration features to act as a solution to common business use cases and share these bundles with other customers to use a starter template.

PROBLEM DISCOVERY AND EVALUATION My first step was to confirm that this concept would be useful to customers and it would lead to the intended customer expansion as well as help teams think of user-centered features, prioritize current features, and position this product strategically.

Working with a UX researcher, we conducted interviews with users that expressed interest in this integration bundle concept. These interviews uncovered how users actually used the integration platform; how their use of the platform differed from the product’s original intent; their likes and dislikes of the platform, as well as their hypothetical use cases for the bundle feature.

I also conducted competitive research to discover if competitors use this same concept, and if so, how they market this feature.

FACILITATION While interacting with the client’s Design and Engineering teams, I noticed a significant opportunity to foster smoother collaboration between the teams, which would be crucial to crafting a seamless customer experience. The UX team expressed concern regarding the lack of transparency during product development, while the Engineering team felt stifiled by the lack of visibility around the product requirements that they would be working on.

To alleviate this friction, I championed UX research to be done concurrently with proof-of-concept development. As we learned more about potential users, we shared this information with the development team. This approach not only provided the transparency sought by Engineering but also generated valuable insights into user types, motivations, and work behavior that guided MVP development. Moreover, it fostered a mutual recognition of the UX team as problem-solving partners on par with Engineering, energizing the entire team with renewed enthusiasm for collaboration and learning.

To help bridge the gap between the development team, executive teams, and other stakeholders, I also conducted user story writing workshops that encouraged the development team to create concise descriptions of what they were working on from the perspective of the end-user. As the product was being created, the simple language in user story statements enabled anyone to understand what features were being worked on and how it related to the product as a whole – the product development, launch, and eventual customer experience.

PRODUCT-MARKET FIT The research I conducted uncovered knowledge about how users interact with the platform that informed the direction of product development. User interviews validated the value of bundles, but not in the assumed way. Customers didn’t express a strong need for more than the main integration feature, but they expressed enthusiasm for being able to share integration methods with other users as well as other supporting artifacts (e.g., spreadsheets, diagrams, PDFs) as a means to help new users get started on the platform quickly; they could start from the template and work backwards as opposed to starting completely from scratch.

My competitive research revealed that direct competitors already provide a similar concept, but there hasn’t been any direct correlation between that capability and customer expansion.

Both these research findings led to a pivot from customer expansion to a focus on customer acquisition and a reduction in the customer’s “time-to-value.”

PROTOTYPE CREATION Because a proof of concept (POC) was a priority for the client, I conducted user interviews and competitive research concurrently while the POC was being built. In order to know what to build and ensure that it is both achievable and valid – regardless of whether or not the research validated the bundle concept – I worked with development, research, and design teams to strip the bundle idea down to its most basic concept that would form the foundation of the bundle concept no matter what direction it would take – to validate that several features are able to be packaged and shared with another user.

Throughout POC creation, I shared my research findings with all teams and used user story mapping as a visual aid to link user needs and research findings with engineering tasks.

IMPACT Problem discovery in the form of competitive research and user interviews yielded data about customer behaviors, wants, and needs in addition to features that gave the client a strategic advantage over competitors. This data also helped the client avoid a product-market mismatch and pivot to features that would simultaneously enhance the needs of current users and help onboard prospective new customers. I also created product roadmaps, user story maps, user personas, customer acquisition metrics, and time-to-value metrics to guide further product development.