The Bank – 2019
January – February 2019 (6 weeks) – U.S.A.
My Employer: Deloitte Digital (Seattle, U.S.A.)
To maintain confidentiality, the client’s name has been anonymized, and deliverables scrubbed of client logo and name.
The Brief
An Investment Bank (“IB” or “client”) in the U.S. were undertaking a large technology program, with one initiative being a Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation. IB asked Deloitte Digital to assist with the implementation, bringing on teams for Experience Design, Functional, Change Management, and Technical. The goal of the Experience stream was to understand the future users of the CRM, by capturing their current client relationship management journey, and designing visionary Salesforce screens, capturing their wants and needs. The goal of the implementation was for field staff and management to have a holistic platform for all relationship data to enable more efficient client management.
My Role and Process
As the Experience Design Lead, I was brought on to lead a team of three (rolling on at different times), to undertake research and visionary design. I would be running the delivery plan, executing work, guiding the team and reviewing work, and most importantly, being the person who ensured that all of the deliverables synced. The first three weeks were spent undertaking research activities, with the final three spent on designs. We were tasked to complete:
- Stakeholder UX workshop
- Contextual inquiries
- Personas
- Journey maps of the future experience
- Salesforce screens (wireframes, then visual designs)
- Clickable prototype
- Final presentation
Our first week was spent supporting the project kick-off, adding an experience section to the overall presentation, which I went through with the Executive Creative Director (ECD), explaining our process, deliverables, and value we would bring to the project and client. The rest of our first week was spent getting up-to-speed with the other streams (who had all supported throughout the proposal phase), and getting ready to run a UX workshop the following week in the client’s city.
UX Workshop
These first couple of weeks I worked with a junior UXer, creating the activities and plan for the workshop, and running the logistics. The workshop was only for 4 hours, and so we designed the activities so we would get to our outcomes quickly – direction for the proceeding contextual inquiries. To get some of the direction we needed, I set up a meeting with our key stakeholder (and thus, core project team), to introduce the Experience stream, our plan for the six weeks, and ask questions. From this session, we were able to set up a twice-weekly cadence to meet, and understood the nine roles that would be impacted by the Salesforce implementation.
Using the list of the nine roles, we organized the workshop activities around getting as much information about them as we could, especially that the workshop would be filled with the project team only (28 people). We ran a role definition activity; captured the current experience through a journey mapping activity; captured the vision of the future through a Tweet Like Me exercise, highlighting features and overall goals; and then came back and created opportunities for solutions for the pain points identified earlier in the journey mapping activity. After each activity, each break-out group would present back to the room, in order to spark ideas amongst the groups.
Contextual Inquiries
Armed with the background information from the workshop, we began the contextual inquiries, across the variety of roles. We held the 27 virtually, and ran a screen-sharing portion to see the process and pain points as they were explained. We started off the sessions broad, and then in later sessions narrowed in on very specific questions in order to fill in gaps for completing the deliverables. Our team grew in this time, adding a Visual Designer in the second week, and a Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) and Financial Services expert (the ‘Experience Designer’) in the third week for half-time. During this week, I would facilitate the contextual inquiries with the Experience Designer, and change the questions as needed. I was also working on shaping up the personas, and he on the journey maps; the Junior UXer was note-taking and working on the summary of the workshop outcomes; and the Visual Designer was getting up to speed on the project, understanding Salesforce FSC patterns, and designing the workshop summary deck.
The workshop summary we sent to the client. 1: the vision we heard from the Tweet Like Me exercise; 2+3; the roles and example of a role; 4-6 the pain points, and an example of one of the three main pain points
The following week we started shifting into delivery mode, with each team member owning their own set of deliverables. Personally, I was responsible for delivering the personas, but also the overall delivery of the stream. I chose to own the personas as they were the first deliverable due, and so I’d have the remaining week of the project to be reviewing the rest of the deliverables, ensuring they all synced and told one narrative, and working on the final presentation. I was also putting together the twice-weekly review decks and presenting these to the client core team, and Deloitte streams.
Personas
Based on the contextual inquiry notes, I identified three main personas of the nine roles interviewed, based on the prominence the system would play in the persona’s work, their work behaviors, and tasks they would use Salesforce for. The Relationship Manager persona was all about using the true CRM capabilities of the system, utilizing the client records and summaries for client calls and annual reporting. The Organizer persona would be undertaking structuring tasks in Salesforce, such as setting up and maintaining client records, and team workflows. The Steward persona encapsulated the various levels of management, and those who needed to access the client records for legal purposes. It was important to me that the personas were valuable and useful beyond the Discovery phase – and so they highlight functional requirements, solutions for pain points, and Salesforce widget names; rather than fluffy profile material which some personas can contain.
Personas – 1: My initial groupings of behaviors, to identify the personas, which was the first time I ran these past the client for input; 2: A high-level summary of the personas I presented in the final presentation; 3: The Relationship Manager; 4: The Organizer; 5: The Steward
Journey Maps
I asked the Experience Designer to own the journey map piece, knowing that he could add FSC capabilities, value and accuracy into the experience, as well as accuracy around investment banking tasks and transactions. Our ECD had suggested identifying the screens we had wanted to work on by calling out key moments, which was something we highlighted in the journey maps. The key moments were the pivotal, important steps, whereby Salesforce could really augment and help the user achieve the key moment. Knowing that we had visualizations in the form of screens as a deliverable, we made use of a content-focused template I had used on another project, enabling us to really detail the capabilities (shown in the wireframes) and the changes (informing the Change stream).
1-3: Explaining what key moments are, the Five E’s framework, and the moments we had identified through the contextual inquiries. 4-8: The Journey Maps outlining the future experience of using Salesforce. The maps highlight the experience, Salesforce capabilities, change management impacts, business value, and the key, pivotal moment per phase
The Salesforce Screens
The screens were delivered in two steps, first as a wireframe, and then as a polished visual design. As a team we identified the six screens we would design, based on the key moments, and solving the biggest pain points we heard in the contextual inquiries. I asked the Junior UXer to own the wireframe deliverables, and getting up to speed on Salesforce FSC capabilities. Connecting her with the Functional Team, and supporting during internal reviews (held before each client review), my role was to help provide guidance, review her work, and help with getting it client-ready for the reviews. With the short timeline, she was presenting two screens for each review, so the visual designer would have the final week free from new screens being introduced.
1: Identifying the screens we would design 2-4: An example of how we would review a screen – the summary slide – zoomed out, with the key moment journey and persona link, and pain points from the personas, and then two zoomed in slides, detailing the capabilities through annotations (with the journey map experience and personas telling a narrative of how the capability would be used) and whether they were an extension of an MVP capability; 5-8: The summary views of the remaining four screens
Due to the short timeline, we decreased our screen scope to 5 screens, as there was a risk the visual designer wouldn’t finish on-time. I chose to descope the client record screen due to it being the closest to being out-of-the-box, with the Household Summary screen being a more valuable and customized screen (and still showing client record information). The Experience Designer really helped during this time to provide guidance with the FSC capabilities to use, and financial products and numbers to make the screens realistic.
Worried at the start of week 5 that the client wasn’t giving much feedback in our review sessions, I brainstormed with the Delivery Lead as to how we could pull feedback from our client. I was concerned that they would suddenly give feedback at the very end of the project when we didn’t have time to make changes, and I had started planning the final presentation already, of which I knew I wanted to print out the final deliverables. This was combatted by hosting three “co-design sessions” with the key client decision-makers and influencers in week 5, sharing our screen while we made live changes to the wireframes based on client feedback. This was exactly what this group needed – a chance to feel that they owned the designs – and helped us get our screens signed off one by one.
To cap off the final couple of days, the Junior UXer worked on copying in the content for the screen flow and setting up the clickable prototype in InVision, the Visual Designer on the print-outs, and the Experience Designer and myself on reviewing everything and preparing the final presentation.
The Final Presentation
The Tuesday of the seventh week, we hosted a final presentation, which aligned with our Discovery phase sign-off for all Deloitte streams. The core client project team wanted to invite 40 stakeholders to the presentation, to view the progress on the project and what the Discovery phased had uncovered. Knowing that this was a big event for the client, and that it’s hard to consume our deliverables via a presentation, we organized to print all the deliverables and create an Experience Gallery walk-through. At the start of the project, I had shown the team of a big screen flow I had done for a previous client, and how much they loved it. I suggested that we do the same for this client; however we didn’t tell the client of our plan in case we ran out of time, and also it would be an extra to the agreed deliverables. We considered it a “gift”, which we hoped to complete. Having the personas and journeys printed 2x3ft on posterboard without the screens though felt like it was only telling half the story, and so I’m glad I asked the visual designer to begin the layouts for the screen flow while waiting for the wireframes. We printed the final screen flow at 3.5x24ft, weaving in the personas, journey, key moments, screens, and annotations. We also printed compendiums for everyone in the room of the personas and journeys, as the presentation itself only contained the highlights of these deliverables.
1-3: The screen-flow; 4-9: The walk-through Experience Gallery; 10: The presentation room with printed compendiums
The Experience Gallery walk-through for the first half hour of the session was a big success, with the stakeholders most impressed with the work, and the core project team proudly explaining the deliverables. The client team was very excited about the screen flow, informing us where they could imagine it hanging on their walls! The presentation went smoothly, with all streams presenting a unified Discovery output, and plan for the Implementation phase. I presented the experience section with the Functional Lead, explaining each of the capabilities and how they would be explored during the build phase.
Lessons Learnt
Work backwards from the outcomes. Working on the HD Supply project, I had learnt that putting together the review decks each week took more time than originally planned, and didn’t have a final use in the end. For the IB, I knew that I would be putting together the twice-weekly review decks, and so from the very beginning, I worked backwards, from the final presentation outcomes, planning each section. The materials from each review deck would comprise of the final presentation deck, ensuring that we wouldn’t have to create a separate deck at the very end. I ensured from the start that the deliverables were always synced, and our approach was clearly laid out. The final presentation deck required only two new slides, with the rest all coming from the review decks. The added advantage of this was that the core project team, and Deloitte streams, were very familiar with our content, and could feel ownership in the final presentation (client) and could plan the Implementation phase with good insight on the experience (Deloitte team).
Sync all of the deliverables. Being the Experience Lead on the project, it was my role to have an intimate knowledge of all of the deliverables, and ensure that all of the deliverables told one story. I didn’t want a deliverable to be created, and then sit to the side. I ensured this through three main ways:
- Working closely with the visual designer to tie the deliverables with color and imagery. Throughout all deliverables, blue, yellow and green were each used to signify a persona. The persona images were used in all of the deliverables also
- Integrating all deliverables. The journey maps outlined the Salesforce capabilities also highlighted in the personas; the copy on the Salesforce screens contained journey map copy which brought the experience to life; the slide containing each screen for review contained the experience narrative from the key moment, the persona, the pain points from the personas, and other key moments the screen could support; and the screen annotations included the journey detail as well
- Creating one ultimate deliverable, which weaved everything together. Although the client wasn’t expecting it, and it wasn’t in our Statement of Work, I knew that creating a screen flow would not only show off the screens, but also weave every deliverable together. I suggested it be our “wow piece”; which was hated internally at times when the timeline was tight already; but the team was really proud of and realized the connecting value of it when it was complete. The screen flow encapsulated a high-level view of the personas, the screens, annotations and key moment narrative, as well as each step in the journey represented as a flow. This shows the future experience of a client relationship with the use of Salesforce, which was our original objective.
Team limitations. Initially, I was the only one on the team who had completed a Salesforce Lightning design project, and that had been back in 2015 (so I was rusty, plus the design had changed in this time). I asked the Junior UXer to become our team expert on Salesforce, watching tutorials, reading the Lightning Design Library, and connecting her with the Functional team. Adding the Salesforce expert to our team (even though only at 50%) in week 3 really helped us out; but it was always difficult not having an in-depth knowledge of a system when the timeline was very short. We borrowed Sketch files from other projects, and read up on decks from other Financial Services projects to understand the users, and recommendations from those projects (brushing up on Salesforce and Financial Services knowledge). The team itself was junior in a couple of ways – the Junior UXer was relatively new at UX, and so guiding her was about encouraging her to research interaction design patterns; brainstorming each screen together based on the contextual inquiries before wireframing; checking over any recommendations she had made and stress-testing them (MECE & value-add); and reviewing her work. The Visual Designer was new to the company, and so required a different kind of guidance. She was also unfamiliar with Salesforce design, had come onto the project in week 2 (when the UX team was traveling), and was unfamiliar with the fast pace of the project. Guiding her became about figuring out ways I could support her – sourcing other project files and templates, researching capabilities, sitting with her and reviewing her work and offering guidance, brainstorming how feedback could be applied, and ultimately descoping a screen to ensure she could meet the project deadline. I really relished guiding the team, and overseeing all of the deliverables and ensuring they weaved together.
One Deloitte. It was really important to our Delivery Lead that we appear as ‘One Deloitte’ to the client. As well as running the Experience stream, I was also acting as an integrator and connector with the rest of the streams, finding out what they were doing, and sharing what we were doing. I would ask to come to information-gathering meetings with the client run by another stream; helped the Functional team come up with workshop activities for defining the MVP (using my trusty Monopoly money method); defined roles for everyone to help with the UX workshop; worked with the Change team on the communications for the contextual inquiry invites; I invited all streams to listen in on the contextual inquiries; I informed the Technical team of systems I had heard of in the interviews to ensure they were considered; I created a post-MVP wishlist for the Functional team, based on the contextual inquiries (the screens only represented MVP capabilities); gave the daily stream update at stand-up and weekly project status meetings; and lastly owned the final presentation, working on a structure whereby the Deloitte team would present together as one, showing the client that we had worked together all project, and knew the impact of each other’s work. This was also a role I really relished – I felt that it made the project much stronger to be working as one, as I’ve been on projects where it has clearly not been the case. It was great that it was a push for this project, and I was happy to work closely with the wider team, and the Experience stream.
Results
The client loved our deliverables, and were very excited with the Experience Gallery. The IB CTO said the work was “incredible”, and the Deloitte Partner said that we had now set the standard with working with IB. The work has led to further sales opportunities with IB.