Challenge

In the uber-competitive CX analytics market, Topbox sought to provide clients a more comprehensive way of measuring customer experience, using actual interactions instead of rudimentary surveys. The product also needed to evolve to give users insights in to their business without having to search for them. In short, we had to help users understand and act on a brand-new CX metric, as well as create a high-performing (and shiny) front-door for the Topbox application.

My role

I designed the entirety of the user experience, including user flows and prototypes, design system components, user interface, and interactions. I also wrote requirements and QA’d the experience at each step of development.

To comply with Topbox's non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted any confidential information, including application performance and client data, from this case study. All opinion is my own.

Approach

Topbox leadership landed on an equation that would drive the metric, as well as a name: Brand Experience Score™. The audience would be a relatively new, but growing user base in the application, C-Suite and Executives. For successful adoption, these users would need answers delivered to them as soon as they signed in, with their businesses being measured as specified units and as a whole.

Design system updates

To support a more streamlined means of measuring and displaying business KPIs, new patterns and enhancements were applied to the Topbox design system. Score cards that would populate the dashboard were developed to clearly communicate current and previous performance. Bringing lightness and reduction in visual noise, like borders and typographic variance, was the aim of the evolving styles, in order to help a new audience focus on the most important data.

Initial designs

The user flow for the new experience was relatively simple, with only the dashboard and details screens being available at launch. One important aspect of the flow however, was to facilitate users passing off the data cohort that determined each score to our robust search feature within Topbox. The dashboard was comprised of score cards representing each business unit, with slightly more prominence given to the overall score. The details screen for each business unit highlighted KPIs and provided a trend chart to see the full history of scores and find anomalous performance.

An alpha phase of development provided internal groups, including our Solutions and CSM teams, access to test and demo with users. Then, a beta phase gave a few high-visibility clients the new feature in their environments to garner feedback and address usability concerns before the full product launch.

Learnings

The agile nature of our dev process provided some key findings. We learned the overall score created the most excitement among users, yet unfortunately it was blending in to the rest of the dashboard. It was also clear, once we saw the client data in action, the movement trend was much less dramatic than designed for. This created an experience problem as it was difficult for users to see spikes or drops in performance, not to mention it made the dashboard a bit boring. And, users had some trouble discerning the change in scores represented by trend indicators, without digging in to the details of each BXS™.

Result

Based on client and internal user feedback during the initial phases of the product launch, the experience continued to evolve. The dashboard was rearranged to give more prominence to the overall score, while the score cards were adjusted to promote more variance in the spark charts and greater focus on selected items. Sparks and the larger trend charts were updated to indicate partial vs. full data points.

The way we communicate change in score was also reevaluated. The indicator pattern was redesigned to show direction plus numerical difference, and be colored based on positive, neutral or negative performance to match their accompanying charts. In an upcoming release, users will be given the ability to select their comparative dates, in order to better understand their scores over time.

Finally, a management console was developed to allow our Solutions Engineers, CSMs, and other internal managers to build and edit the equations and details of each metric.

Topbox / Advanced Search