Global Nav
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UserTesting
UserTesting is a leading user research and testing company that helps businesses improve their digital experiences by providing valuable insights from real users. Founded in 2007, the company has established itself as a market leader in the industry, serving over 35,000 customers worldwide. UserTesting offers a range of solutions, including website and app testing, usability testing, and customer feedback surveys. The company's platform allows businesses to quickly and easily collect user feedback, analyse data, and make informed decisions to improve their products and services.
The Problem
The ‘Global Nav’ project was undertaken to improve the user experience of the company's product, which had become increasingly hard to navigate and disjointed due to a rapidly growing feature set and user base.
Low user session times were also a concern, indicating that users were struggling to engage with the product. Furthermore, the product's information architecture was no longer fit for purpose, making it difficult for users to find what they were looking for.
Early lo-fi concept exploration
The Goal
The project centred around developing a more intuitive and user-friendly customer dashboard, providing an easy to use jumping off point to all areas of the product that were previously either difficult to find, or buried within other product areas.
The solution also needed to allow users to more easily find the information they were seeking better engage with the the product, and provide a more powerful feature set for test management and organisation
Early concept explorations helped to quickly refine project scope
Research
Working side by side with the UX Researcher on the ‘Global Nav’ team, detailed screen-by-screen wireframes, mock-ups, and a high-fidelity clickable prototypes were produced in close collaboration with key product owners. Through regular feedback sessions with both stakeholders and end users, a final solution was rapidly iterated on and refined once everyone was aligned on the project direction.
One key benefit of UserTesting being a research software company, was that we had direct unfettered access to a testing product with a panel of thousands that we could regularly and quickly test with, providing huge amounts of insight and data we were able to rapidly synthesise and use to inform the final design direction.
Componentry used for prototyping
Design
The central concept behind the ‘Global Nav’ project had begun in earnest several times in the years and months prior to this incarnation, only to be shelved again. I was brought on board to lead the design direction of the project which would then permeate through the rest of the product.
The project began with a series of workshops with several feature teams to gain a deeper understanding of the company's business goals, existing product areas, and user needs. The team was then able to generate a variety of potential solutions and layouts, using low-fidelity methods such as sketching and wireframes to quickly explore different ideas.
The team then distilled the findings from the workshops into a prioritised list of requirements. With these requirements in hand, the team worked through user flows, site maps, and lo-fidelity design iterations to identify the most effective design direction for the updated customer dashboard.
As the design process continued into higher fidelities, several approaches to navigation and layout patterns were explored. The team worked a variety of patterns, with the primary constraint being how we could ‘wrap’ other product areas within the newly proposed navigation structure.
Lo-fi mockups and existing product comparisons were a big aspect of ensuring stakeholder alignment
Challenges
The project presented several major challenges throughout its duration. One of the most significant challenges was ensuring stakeholder alignment across the company, given the broad implications of the project for the business.
Additionally, the team had to navigate dependencies on several other product areas within the company, which required close coordination and collaboration with other feature teams.
Finally, given the scope and importance of the project, the team needed to maintain regular communication with the leadership team to ensure that goals and priorities remained aligned with wider company objectives, and because such a drastic redesign had larger implications affecting other departments such as sales, and marketing.
Updated (left) and existing product screens. A key constraint of the project was ensuring new navigation patterns could cater to existing pages for other feature teams
Results
‘Global Nav’ achieved a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) set out at the beginning of the project that demonstrated the value of the redesign effort.
Specifically, the project resulted in increased user session times, a higher number of tests being run, and more frequent logins overall. Additionally, the redesign led to increased usage of company workspaces and folders, which resulted in higher customer satisfaction scores.
