Expanding Existing Product Functionality | UX Case study
About Product
The SOFTBOT Platform accelerates the deployment process for IT organizations by minimizing the time-to-live for complex technologies that typically pose challenges. It facilitates automation deployments by ensuring seamless data connectivity between systems, while also providing robust support and maintaining system uptime.
Challenges
As a member of the design team, I worked on addressing one of the platform’s major challenges: creating a single source of truth for storing the productized SOFTBOT Library, as well as SOFTBOTs developed by external system integrators and internal deployment engineers.
Some of the main requirements for the MVP:
- Allow users not only to access the SOFTBOT database library but also enable them to modify SOFTBOTs—by saving, editing, archiving, and downloading—based on their roles and specific needs.
- Clarify the distinction between SOFTBOTs and Flows in the designer, as their definitions were initially interchangeable and not clearly defined.
Personas to focus on
After conducting multiple discovery sessions with internal teams, including solutions architects, deployment engineers, and external OEM partners, I developed a concise summary of persona empathy maps that highlighted key focus areas for the MVP. Given the product's complexity, personas were categorized by roles such as Admins, Writers, and Readers to address their unique needs and interactions with the platform.
Research and User Journey
Since this project builds on the SOFTBOT Designer Journey that I had previously defined, the key interactions with the future library are designed to take place at both the beginning and end of this user journey.
The condensed user journey outlined here focuses on the Developer persona’s process of building a SOFTBOT within the Designer, highlighting critical touchpoints and interactions that are specific to their workflow.
Screenshot of original user journey:
Steps to focus on
The initial interactions in the user journey are as follows:
- Step 1: The user logs into the platform and lands on the Library page, where they can explore SOFTBOT templates and begin their project in the Designer.
- Step 7: Once the SOFTBOT is created or modified in the Designer, the user can save the new or updated SOFTBOT back into the Library, ensuring proper storage and accessibility for future use.
Competitor Analysis
Following this, I conducted a direct and indirect competitor analysis, focusing on products with similar interfaces and functionalities. This analysis provided valuable insights into market trends, helping to identify best practices and potential areas for differentiation in SVT platform.
User Flows
In collaboration with the Product Manager, I worked on visualizing solutions for Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). I designed detailed User Flows for each role, outlining the key actions users could take, including: opening files in the Designer, copying files, adding new flows, uploading files, and archiving content. These flows ensured that permissions and access were tailored to specific user roles, such as Admins, Writers, and Readers, while maintaining a seamless user experience.
Example view of original sets of Discovery sessions and user flows in Aha:
I also established a solid foundation for tracking funnels in Fullstory, enabling the future monitoring of user interactions and testing the RBAC user flows and full user journeys.
As a key tool for observing user behavior in real-time, Fullstory will simplify the process of collecting valuable user data, allowing for data-driven iterations and refinements to the design. This approach ensures continuous improvement based on real user insights.
Workshop facilitation
After completing the mid-fidelity screens for review with stakeholders and engineers, I organized an internal workshop where I presented the initial prototypes, focusing on the main user flows in Vault. During the demo, I walked the team through each visual user flow step-by-step, addressing questions, concerns, and constraints raised by the engineering team. This collaborative session ensured alignment across teams and helped identify any potential roadblocks early in the process.
User Testing
Following the workshops, I addressed areas of concern and revised the prototypes, focusing on the main user flows. I set up these prototypes in the Maze tool for user testing.
Since this was a brand-new concept for the product, I conducted multiple rounds of feature testing and surveys, including user flow tests for opening templates, uploading new files, and evaluating different table layout structures for the Library. These tests provided valuable insights into the usability and effectiveness of the new features and design approaches.
As some user flows were simple and east to navigate based on the very first Maze user testing.
We also learnt:
- There was a need to simplify the number of steps for the user during uploading process.
- Need to come up with alternative solutions for layout of SOFTBOTs and flows related to them.
- Need to alternate copy for main call to actions to decrease the risk of wrong selections and extra clicks.
During the validation step, i went through multiple iterations of the prototypes which were tested with internal and external users to create the most intuitive interface for this new product with requirements restraints for MVP.
Results
At the time I completed my work on this project, the design was in its final design phase, all new elements and components were added to Design System and ready for development team. While the project may have evolved since then, this case study reflects my contributions up to the point of my involvement, including the design solutions, user research, and iterations I participated in during my time with the team.