UX & Service Designer
Case study. Face of the transformation
company. Pacific Business Trust (www)
timeframe. February 2020
category. discovery
team. two designers
Project background
The Pacific Business Trust (PBT) is a Charitable Trust established in 1985. Their purpose is to grow Pacific businesses into sustainable, viable and commercially successful enterprises.
Pacific Business Trust is currently on their transformation journey where their main goal is to increase the Pacific businesses capabilities on the New Zealand market. The transformation includes changes on many different fronts, both in and outside the digital world. While PBT have already started to work on part of the transformation with the Accenture team, they needed help with setting directions for their website redevelopment.
Project objectives
Bringing the new PBT vision to life requires building a database of trusted Pacific business owners. Understanding that the new customer enrolment is the main purpose for the website, set a clear direction to approach the project.
Following the human-centred design principles, people became our main focus during the discovery. Understanding the cultural differences, needs and capabilities of our target audience were a priority. The technical complexity of the project was another area that required attention, not only from the development perspective but mostly because of multiple service touchpoints where both customers and PBT team were involved.
Process
1. The fundamentals:
Kick-off meeting with the CEO of the PBT and reading all the provided documentation from Pacific Business Trust and Accenture were our first step to gain an understanding the basics - the vision of the company, market presence, their audience and course of the transformation they’re under.
Technical Demo with Accenture gave us an understanding of the scope beyond the website and showed that the primary purpose of the website was to be a gateway to services provided by PBT. The meeting also helped us to set up project scope and communication guidelines.
To get to know current PBT website visitors behaviour we analysed the data from the last 6 months of the already existing website. We took into consideration gender, age, devices, used browsers, most popular pages and the audience behaviour.
Analysis of the existing website and provided documentation.
2. Setting direction
The interviews with PBT team members allowed us to deeper understand the new customer registration and evaluation process. It was important to uncover the requirements from the administration team perspective.
Before the interview session with PBT customers, we organised a sketching session where we brainstormed different ideas of finding the relevant services. The purpose of the session was to create simple wireframes that we could show them to participants and get their feedback.
Sketching session.
We focused on 3 main website areas:
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Home page and services page
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Registration form
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Feedback form
The interviews with the PBT customers were composed of 2 parts: questions and answers session and the wireframes feedback.
Interviews in progress.
Key insights
Trust
The Pacific community values personal relationship and they mainly rely on family and friends recommendations. Moreover, we realised that the Pacific community does not trust the PBT brand - which was mentioned in the research conducted to date and was confirmed during the interviews.
Customer profile
One of the main industries PBT focus their activities on is construction. Even though men are the majority of this target group, their families (wives, kids) are the one making strategic decisions and helping with Internet-based business activities.
Language
The language used on the website plays a key role in creating understanding and relationship between potential customer and PBT. During the interviews, participants didn’t understand the corporate-sounding words and what they stand for.
Furthermore, the Pacific community in New Zealand originate from over 10 different islands. Most of them have their own language or dialect. While we didn’t identify the English language as a barrier within the Pacific business owners we talked to, the research conducted earlier by the Accenture team highlighted it as a potential problem. It was especially true in the construction industry they had focused on.
Community
The business and being 'my own boss' is important in Pacific communities but people always go first. Family, friends and church provide support and understanding. Giving back to the community is an essential part of the pacific culture, sadly some Pacific business owners feel misunderstood and pressured into giving back more than they can afford.
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Wireframes feedback.
Recommendations
Recommendations included but were not limited to:
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Providing a list of possible solutions to help build an honest relationship between the PBT and the potential customer
e.g. use testimonials, showcase successful stories of well known Pacific business owners. -
Using plain English language and simplifying complex processes in an easy to understand way.
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Using language and graphical materials that emphasis on the business owners, and presenting the PBT as an invisible supporter - a coach whose main task is to lead their team to success.
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Removing a number of fields in the registration form to simplify the process and increase the completion rate.
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Including a graphical representation of the registration process to improve understanding of all the required steps.
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Adding information to the contact form around the time of response, recipient and sending the email copy and confirmation.
Insights gathered from the interviews sessions with both internal PBT team and potential customer helped us to establish high-level content for the new website and create a site-map. Moreover, we collected insights which we used to create a list of use cases that were directly used to map user flows.
At the end of the discovery, we were able to create a backlog with a list of user and research stories for the upcoming phases of the project.
The next phase (BUILD) included:
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sketching session to quickly brainstorm the ideas and content layout,
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wire-framing + Q&A with development team - to test the flows, content layout and check the technical feasibility of the website,
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coordinating the visual language with the newly established marketing strategy,
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designing high-quality mockups and iterations + Q&A with the development team
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cooperating with the development team - Q&A and testing
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setting up the basic Google Analytics metrics
Summary
The discovery quickly became very challenging. The amount of research and transformation documentation we needed to read, understand and synthesise took a huge chunk of the dedicated discovery time. The time itself was a key asset on the project, not only because of the budget but also the importance to deliver the work in parallel with other parties. In consequence, we were restricted to smaller but easier to reach group of participants. Next phase of the project will include research around events and services.
