Marketplace
Marketplace is a web-based application that provides customers with a streamlined experience for discovering, purchasing, and deploying applications onto their control systems.
Challenge
Leverage the company’s newly adopted cloud network by allowing customers to easily and securely deploy applications to their control systems. Do this by designing a web-based application that provides a pleasant user experience.
Approach
My team and I created a Marketplace concept that will allow customers to discover and deploy applications onto their control systems. Initially, we developed it as an independent web application. However, after many rounds of usability testing, collaboration with stakeholders, and ideation sessions, we decided that it would be better if Marketplace’s capabilities were integrated into one of the company’s existing applications.
Outcome
We currently have customer-validated prototypes and concepts, that are supported by our technological capabilities. By knowing that Marketplace is something our customers want, business leaders support, and technology can handle- we feel confident with moving Marketplace into development.
My Role, Contributors, and Tools Used
I was involved in every stage of the project, and most stages were group efforts. However, I was solely responsible for creating prototypes and facilitating A/B testing.
Duration: 7 months
Contributors
Research Engineer
Product Marketing Manager
Another UX Designer
Product Owner
Program Manager
Tools Used
Mural
Adobe XD
Microsoft Teams
Company Design System
The Design Process
Throughout the project, we focused on receiving continuous feedback from customers and stakeholders. This resulted in us revisiting previously completed tasks such as user research, prototyping, etc.). These iterations helped ensure we were staying aligned with business and customer needs.
1) Exploration with Customers
A workshop was conducted with 13 customers. It began by setting the context, with a high-level explanation for the idea behind Marketplace. Afterward, customers answered specific questions about Marketplace regarding its value add, use cases, areas for concern, and desired functionality.
2) Findings Synthesis
After receiving customer feedback, the team then used the affinity clustering method to group each piece of feedback by like ideas. By organizing the feedback into groups, we were able to understand the direction we’d need to take from a higher level.
3) Feature Creation
After we were able to understand the key ideas of what customers were saying, we then discussed which of their desired features we would implement into the Marketplace prototype. These features were chosen while considering the factors of technology, business development, and user experience.
4) Prototyping v1
I implemented the decided on features into an interactive Adobe XD prototype.
Some key highlights of the prototype are:
The ability to toggle between “All Apps” and “My Apps”
A static sidebar navigation that displays search results
Filtering and sorting capabilities
Related applications
Star Ratings & Provider Responses
5) Group Brainstorming: Integrating Marketplace into an existing application
After reviewing the prototype with the team, we saw the potential to integrate Marketplace into an already existing application, Guardian. Guardian is an application that provides customers with a personalized experience for managing their systems, and Marketplace’s features would complement Guardian well. In order to gauge the feasibility of the integration, we involved the Program Manager for Guardian who would act as Guardian’s SME.
We conducted a workshop, where together we brainstormed the ways that Guardian may be able to adopt Marketplace.
Brainstorming Key Findings:
There is an opportunity to reduce development costs by using Guardian’s infrastructure.
Many of Marketplace’s features are found inside of Guardian- so no need to reinvent the wheel.
The features that are not already in Guardian, would need to be integrated
Integrating Marketplace could potentially bring in more customers for Guardian.
6) Cloud Network Diagramming
In order to make sure that customers would be able to securely purchase and deploy applications onto their control systems, we had to ensure that there would be a network architecture that would support this.
I worked with the Research Engineer, where together we created a diagram for the cloud network architecture.
7) Group Brainstorming: Integrating Marketplace into an existing application (cont.)
The team and I continued to brainstorm how we would integrate the two applications. We conducted four sessions, where we progressively ideated on how to leverage the marketing, technology, and design aspects for the integration.
We asked questions such as:
How might we sell products other than applications (hardware, services, etc.)?
How might we design a workflow that allows customers to seamlessly and securely purchase products?
How might we expand to allow customers to purchase third-party company products?
How might we allow users to maintain a level of anonymity when leaving product reviews?
8) Prototyping v2
As the brainstorming sessions were being held, I was responsible for building a second prototype that integrated Guardian and Marketplace based on what we were discussing. The team was continuously reviewing the prototype to determine if we were heading in the desired direction.
By the end of the fourth brainstorming session, I’d created a prototype for Guardian Marketplace that aligned with the team’s vision.
9) A/B Testing on Prototypes
There were now two separate prototypes for Marketplace. Although they both shared similarities, there were some key differences between the two:
Guardian Marketplace (option 2)
Lives inside of the Guardian web-application
Sells applications, hardware, and services
Wouldn’t require a separate subscription but may have an
upchargeDifferent UI & navigation
Stand-alone Marketplace (option 1)
Standalone web-application
Only sells applications
Would require a separate subscription
Different UI & navigation
In order to determine which option was preferable, I conducted A/B testing on the two prototypes.
I held individual testing sessions with a total of 5 customers, to gain their insights.
During the test, I began by showing a user flow to set the context for the first prototype they would be shown, Guardian Marketplace.
I then gave a demo of the Guardian Marketplace interactive prototype. I facilitated the test by asking questions related to where we were in the demo. As I facilitated, there were two notetakers who recorded the customer’s responses.
The questions revolved around the UI visual design, ease of navigation, content, and workflow for deploying applications.
After showing Guardian Marketplace, I then switched over to the stand-alone Marketplace prototype.
Similar to the Guardian Marketplace test, I began by setting the context for the stand-alone Marketplace demo by showing its workflow. This was different from Guardian Marketplace's workflow so that the unique features of the stand-alone Marketplace could be showcased.
Afterward, I showed the interactive prototype for the stand-alone Marketplace and asked correlating questions.
In addition to the questions related to the two prototypes, there was time reserved for general feedback. The general feedback questions mostly focused on the business use cases, and why customers may be interested in either of the two Marketplace concepts.
10) Findings Synthesis on A/B Testing
After finishing A/B testing, as a team, we reviewed the responses we received from the customers and organized them into key findings.
Our major key findings were the following:
Discoverability- Customers are not mostly interested in searching for specific products, they are more interested in searching for solutions to their problems.
Guardian has the ability to identify how well a customer’s control system is performing based on certain metrics. If Marketplace was able to use those metrics to identify the risk areas for a control system, it would be able to suggest which products may provide solutions to customers.
Ecommerce- It can sometimes take months for customers to acquire a new product for their company (procurement can be a lengthy process). Procurement is currently done through many emails and phone calls
Streamlining the buying experience would be a huge value add to customers, and may incentivize them to make more purchases resulting in more revenue.
Preference- 4/5 customers preferred Guardian Marketplace because of its integration with an application they were already customers, of and the availability of different product types (applications, services, etc.)
With the majority of customers preferring Guardian Marketplace, and all opportunities aligning with the integration we chose to pursue this direction entirely.