unified search service
WHERE ouR JOURNEY BEGINS (project OVERVIEW)
The innovation team had a task to create a proof of concept (POC) for a unified search service for customers. The intent was to create a new product that provided customers with a shared capability to search across internal and external products.
Project Budget - $1m
Project Team - Lead UX Researcher (Me), Innovation Team
Project Timeline - 4 weeks
WHAT WE WANTED TO DISCOVER (PROJECT GOALS)
Our primary goal had to be an investigation into our user's native search experience. The discovery had to prioritise behaviours and patterns across internal and external products.
We defined the following project goals:
Goal 1. Discovery of users’ behaviour, experience, and patterns during their native search experience.
Goal 2. Does having the ability to search across a wide variety of company products through pace/product fulfill a user need?
Goal 3. Why have previous search experiences within internal products failed? (Reach of the product, the limitations of placement of product, the content within etc.?)
our plan for success (RESEARCH STRATEGY)
A 2-pronged research approach would be able to sketch out customers' native search experiences, identify customer problems, and validate the user's need.
I had to ensure that our customers' need was deriving the proposed build of the service, rather than a strong competitor focus. There was no clarity in our users' search experiences, and it was important to ensure that the product was a solution to a customer's problem and need. It was also important to validate the need for a unified search experience by existing customers.
After a realization of our gaps in information, the team and I discussed a more user-centered approach to this discovery study.
our main CHALLENGE
Focusing on the competitor, rather than the user. My main challenge was shifting the team's perspective, from competitor-focused to user-focused. My approach was to reframe the problem, to identify customer problems while clarifying their search journey.
This would allow us to validate that our customers have a need to search across all products. This shift in perspective, allowed the team to focus on discovering customer problems in the search journey and allowing the proposed search service product to be a potential solution rather than the goal.
HOW WE EXECUTED OUR STRATEGY (RESEARCH PROCESS)
I chose a mixed-methods methodology approach: moderated user interviews, followed by a short closing survey.
The Facilitation Guide
I created our facilitation guide in the form of open-ended questions, based on our project goals, sub-goals, and additional probes. I structured the guide to ensure the facilitation would be intuitive yet hit all our high-priority discovery needs.
User Interviews
We interviewed 8 global participants, across different segments. All user interviews were approximately 60 minutes, and 1:1. I recorded all the user interviews conducted. Once complete, I sorted, scored, and grouped the gathered user feedback. This allowed me to identify high-level themes, unique observations, and behavioural patterns in the data.
Analysis
Using a research template I created, I scored and grouped the user feedback into observations, and grouped themes. These observations were then ordered by frequency of occurrence and presented based on high-level need. I also created high-level emerging themes to help guide the team in understanding the important pieces of a users’ search journey.
Lastly, in addition to the text-based analysis, I created a visual breakdown of the discoveries, to show the team emerging patterns of user behaviours based on persona subtypes.
Actionable Next Steps & High-Level Process Flow
I facilitated an analysis meeting with the team to walk through our discoveries. To create empathy around the customer's native search experience, I created a high-level process flow. This gave the team insight into what customers are looking for, their journey of "searching", and how they choose to end their journey.
Throughout this process, I empowered the team to define user-focused, actionable next steps based on the discoveries.
Tools we used
Tools – User Interviews, Affinity Diagramming, Process Flows, Personas, Strategic Analysis, Lucid Chart
WHAT WE LEARNED (Discoveries)
Insight 1: Client inquiries fuel the motivation to begin their search journey. The majority of users begin broadly and then narrow down. A users’ familiarity with an application (and its results) determines what they use to begin their search experience. Yet there is never a 100% trust of information in results.
Insight 2: Users will continue refining their search results, until they find a "relevant" result, give up, or run out of time. Users use their past experience and the validity of results to determine relevancy.
Insight 3: Users don’t change their search process if they are short on time. They simply spend less time on each step, and most use Google as a "last resort". Users rely on their intranets to complete their work, searching for drafting materials, client matters, and guides.
Ultimately, the team discovered the true space for innovation was in the gray area that had emerged.
Do users want a cross-platform search across products or are they asking for an integrated service experience?
High Level workflow
Centering the user in the search experience would allow this to become a cross-platform service, rather than a federated or enterprise delivery.
LESSONS WE LEARNED
We discovered a strong sub-categorization of users within a persona archetype.
These users have very different search experiences, needs, and problems than those in the larger persona archetype. This has a company-wide impact on the usage and experience of products and services.
Our future plan is to ensure we consider this user subgroup their own segment for recruiting, to gather more robust customer needs.
the impact we had
These insights redefined the search strategy across the entire company. The team created an actionable, short-term plan for a federated search service to gather data.
This service is on track to integrate across 3 different primary global platforms. This will provide trackable metrics on user behaviours, and measure success.
The longer-term strategy is to ensure users have a seamless search experience across all company platforms.
These insights have also furthered corporate positioning, competitor awareness, and company-wide product features.