Acerca de
Conversational
User Experience - CUX
Objective
Determining the optimal approach of building a CUX model, and show use cases that efficiently & effectively minimizes the confusion for a new employee in an unfamiliar environment.
Phase 1: Discover
The first step was to gather internal and external data to help detail out the case study. Using secondary and primary research methods, a thorough understanding of the terms, users, and technical capabilities was gained.
What is CUX
"An interface based on a holistic system of functional, adaptive and meaningful messages exchange, in which both sides of the conversation use and interpret the language codes, maintaining and complying with the constitutive and normative rules in a friendly, informal way."
The more an interface leverages human conversation, the less users have to be taught how to use it. It’s a synthesis of several design disciplines, including voice user interface design, interaction design, visual design, motion design, audio design, and UX writing.
To design it, we need to curate the conversation, defining the flow and its underlying logic in a detailed design specification that represents the complete user experience.
Persona
Along with desk research, the primary users and stakeholders were identified. An understanding of their needs, goals, attitudes and pain points were noted through interviews, chats and observations.
User Journey
Day 1
Day 2
Week 1
Month 1
9:30 am
11 am
11 am
Post Lunch
4 pm
Find room through
reception desk help
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Wait there for HR, with
other new joiners
(can be different dept)
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Attend HR session
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Q&A session with HR
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Asked for documents
multiple times
IT session in
same room
Information
overload
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Excessive
documentation
Lunch
Go to IT
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Wait for Mac and installation of
softwares.
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Supposed to meet
manager directly.
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Introduced to team
and buddy.
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Buddy gives a tour
of the office.
Ice-breaking
oppurtunity
No scheduled
work until
end of the day.
Buddy shares reading
material, documents, etc.
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Buddy explains the kind of
work done, processes, communication, company info, and hierarchy.
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The manager had assigned different topics to be covered by the employee to various team members.
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Get team calendar access.
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Shopping for software that is complex and requires buddy assistance.
Confusion
(What to do)
Data unstructured
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No Followups
Buddy answers
queries about
general work-life:
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Raising Leaves
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Timesheet
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Claims, etc
Highly people
dependent
Given tasks in live projects.
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Make objectives for goals and development plan.
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Involves traveling, hence raised claims and reimbursements for travel, stay, local transport, etc. with the help of a team member.
Process guidance
required / unclear on portal
Presentations which get updated every year.
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Excel sheets with links to sites.
Takeaways
Company culture embodiment required
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Unclear onboarding plan, including training and upskilling, the gap in employee skills, etc.
Using personas to walk stakeholders through the user journey unveils frustrations and pain points that will help clarify actual user priorities over the stakeholder’s personal wish list. They also prevented the team from applying their own mental models to the product design which may not align with actual user needs.
Pain Points
Information Overload
The biggest pain point discovered was the ton of information given to a user together, without any prioritization, timeline, or specificity to the user’s role.
People Dependency
Another huge challenge of the process is that the buddy, or manager, or local team members are on calls, on client visits, etc. They aren’t always available to help a new employee through different topics, answering queries, etc.
Lack of Personalization
The entire onboarding plan is very generic, and doesn’t cater to a specific role.
Phase 2: Solution Ideation
Design thinking techniques were used in various capacities to generate and synthesize ideas, leverage domain knowledge and key insights.
Insights
1. Role based specific information should be easily accessible at all times.
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2. A buddy is usually the one answering the queries of a new employee, who’s not always available.
3. Usually employees take 3-4 weeks to get settled in, before working on live projects.
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4. Managers might have specific tasks for the new person, or change/put him/her on certain projects.
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5. Imperitive for a new UX employee to acquaint themselves with SAP design guidelines and be well versed with softwares like axure etc
6. Team information upfront and easily accessible, especially members who’re not located locally.
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7. File sharing and other policies which are only meant for designers should be easily accessible.
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8. Assignments are an important step to gauge the employee’s readiness to be put on live projects.
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9. Experience of a new employee at SAP can be personalized for a new user by integrating his/her details into the solution. (Addressing by the first name, asking about his/her interests (eventually using this to introduce other people with same interests), etc.
Planing the Bot
Bot as a digital buddy
The bot acts as a digital buddy, eliminating the people's dependency on the current process.
Tackling Information Overload
Taking all the information and trimming it down to only the essential topics a new UX designer at SAP requires. That amount of data is further categorized into different modules, with specific topics.
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It is divided into a time span of 3 weeks, with an assignment at the end. This onboarding plan is editable by the Manager, for cases in which an employee quickly needs to be acquainted with a specific set of topics in a short span of time.
Bringing available people onboard
Each module has a specific facilitator. The facilitator can be anyone from the different offices IBSO has across the globe - which is roughly ~30 people.
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This is done to not only facilitate cross-location interaction but leverage these in-house knowledge sources and not limit the onboarding to a physical location.
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The employee can connect with the facilitators by sending queries or scheduling meetings (sessions) with them via skype. The bot can deliver the requests to the facilitators via Outlook and show their replies in the chat window itself.
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In case of facilitator absence, the bot can direct those messages to the second person in command of the module.
Finalizing Features
1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
Set a personalized onboarding plan for the first few weeks of a new UX designer at SAP, including
About the company and culture Design Tools
SAP Methodology and Technology Design thinking at SAP
Jam Groups Mandatory training
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Progress tracker ensures the pace is not lost, and the user knows how far along s/he is.
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Nudge the user to schedule sessions with the assigned person for a particular module. Encourage him/her to atleast have one session to help understand and gauge.
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Answer queries relating to the following Platforms used
UX guidelines and processes, policies
Reference pages from portal/ JAM / Wiki etc
(Information user asks for, even if not in the onboarding plan)
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Create quick notes to help save and refer material, including screenshots. Makes it easier for the employee to have his own notes in one place alongside the material from which the notes were made.
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Take feedback by asking subjective questions to work out kinks.
Limitation
The brainstorming exercises along with a design thinking workshop had facilitated open dialogue and cooperation between the stakeholders, users, designers, and developers. It was decided that advanced Artificial Intelligence patterns, not required for the first release, can be separated from the initial scope and slated for a follow on release. AI bots need a longer build and test phase to work accurately. They require a long investment.
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Therefore to test the idea, a rule-based bot was decided upon as the MVP (Minimum viable product).
It will also help us get to know what feature functionality is important and what is not in a completely new product.
Phase 3: Experience Design
The ideation yielded a foundational framework of the conversational design. designing the in-depth experience and interactions were required to bring the project to life.
Bot Persona
“People like to think of chatbots as tiny people that live inside their computer or phone because it gives them something they can relate to”.
Conversation Design
As a starting point for all the actions within the system, ‘ Conversation Triggers’ are the anchor points of a larger ecosystem. Triggers fall into 2 categories - each representing a group of ‘actions’, that when triggered, initiated a Skill - i.e. an output message or string of multiple messages.
Information architecture
Conversation paths
All the triggers initiate conversation paths. A conversation path is a flow of messages a particular trigger can undertake. It can consist of multiple actions depending on the complexity of the path. These paths clearly outline the possible outcomes of any trigger. Each ‘feature’ is assigned one conversation path, which may be different for different users eg. new vs existing. Conditional actions, business logics etc form a part of these paths.
Phase 4: Testing and UI
The interactions and conversations were tested out with a demo audience, and the feedback was incorporated. Iterative wireframes and visual design is a conceptual take on how CAL can be brought to life.
​Testing at SAP TechED
A basic MVO of CAL was built and people were free to interact with it. It was interesting to see that when talking to CAL, people tend to forget the layers behind it and simply interact as a user
Limitations of the Demo
1. Feedback on the conversation script and interaction only, not the UI.
2. MVO1 consisted solely of text input and not voice.
Takeaways & Observations
The main part was the onboarding of the user with respect to CAL i.e. when s/he first gets in contact with CAL, the bot makes them a bit confused as to what all they can do or expect from it.
In the subsequent design of the bot, the ‘CAL introduction’ path was re-iterated to achieve the best dialogue flow so the user isn’t lost.
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Lots of people asked CAL to tell them a joke, or humorous titbits of conversation, which most often than not triggered a fallback response. Hence, a lot of random, entertaining content was added in the script, especially the common requests and questions like jokes, gender, the difference between CAL and Siri, favorites (color, movie, etc) - so that the fallback response was reserved for genuinely invalid intents.
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Overall, the response was positive enough to move forward with the first MVP.
Wireframes and UI
Components:
Single statements vs Complete paragraphs | Combining single statements into blocks | Scrolling | Messages arrangement |
Using emojis | Typing indicators
Final Design
Takeaways
SAP gave a taste of a very corporate experience. Designers, developers and business teams worked together for every decision making required in a product or service. This expanded timelines but ensured that an entire team was on the same page. There were certain struggles that came along with that, especially in pushing user-centric design.
Some of the important things I learned from the experience were the invisible skills of how to present from a ux as well as product point of view, being a design evangelist, conducting design thinking workshops etc.
The feasibility, desirability and viability of a product should drive the design and development.