Problem Statement:
eFuneral is a development-first tech company that is focused on building technology that will push the funeral industry technology into the 21st century. eFuneral saw tremendous growth in sales after launching the first sales engine software to assist users in making arrangements online.
In spite of our success, we lacked a cohesive strategy for implementing a UX structure to an already live product without disrupting user workflow. The strategy needed, had to encompass two separate users, the funeral home partners (B2B), and the funeral home client (B2C).
In this document, I will describe on a high level our work since this project has not been released.
Challenges this opportunity created:
- There was no structure and process in place to address a live product without disrupting user workflow.
- There was no documentation recording the design evolution, specifically decisions made for legal reasons.
- Timing, the organization moved at an extremely fast pace.
- There was a deeply rooted development culture that did not encompass design or UX. No design process, flow or communication best practices implemented.
- The industry itself resisted technical advancement.
- There was no system in place to collect product life-cycle feedback. Note: Due to the nature of the industry, it would have been insensitive to contact an end-user planning a funeral to ask for feedback on the product.
- The overall aesthetic of our product was not pleasing. Simply stated – our product was not pretty.
Solutions derived as a response to the challenges:
- Implement a multi-stage UX strategy using multiple design methodologies. Due to the speed of development, we initially opted for a modified version of the Double Diamond design process where the first diamond was smaller than the second. This meant that in our initial UX strategy implementation process, we didn’t put too much emphasis on demanding lots of changes to the UX and Design of the product upfront but gradually positioned the UX team as a resource to help the development team make decisions on the fly. This was valuable due to the small size of the tight-knit development team mostly comprised of backend developers. This helped us build trust and gain buy in. This would ultimately allow us to be in a position of influence within our organization which would make the painful process of restructuring the way we built our products – a little less painful. As the UX strategy implementation progressed, we moved to a standard Double Diamond design modal and ultimately we are now in a position to support a transition to IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking Process with buy-in from leadership and the development team.
- Created a journey map. Within eFuneral and the funeral industry as a whole, taking incremental steps towards total technological advancement is key. A large part of our users are traditionalist and baby boomers. A majority of them are interested in learning new technology, however would prefer not to be bombarded with it. A journey map was created to establish a foundation of understanding for how our flagship product flowed. This allowed us to:
- Create a visual display of the product sequence and highlight ares where UX could be leveraged to refine user debt and optimize user experience.
- Cut down on the time it took to make decisions on what changes could and could not be made to the application. There was no single documentation of the entire user journey. This would result in meetings where leaders and developers were making decisions based on memory of how the product flowed. This would sometimes lead to missteps or to a confused understanding of how the product was organized versus spending the meeting time making the necessary decisions to move the product forward.
- Manage the product as it scaled overtime.
- We tested our products in the market and we took our user feedback very seriously. Smartlook was implemented to monitor the user experience. Because of the nature of our industry, time constraints and capacity, we were unable to implement traditional user testing. After implementing Smartlook, we were able to view the customers’ experience from their perspective and make the necessary changes. Our flagship product has now been on the market long enough to watch for user trends via salesforce reporting.
- An intentional approach to design was established by overhauling the original product design to refine the look and feel of the product. This was established by creating standardized design elements and components to create product patterns.
Project takeaways
- Build strong relationships with project stakeholders to gain buy-in and to position UX as the solution.
- Manage the perception of the user in the eyes of the larger team. As technologist, we sometimes forget about how the tools we build impact the lives of real people. Keeping that in the forefront of our team was essential to our success.
- Lead with the research. Initially, when trying to keep up with the pace of development and implementing changes on the fly, the UX team would lead with the solution. This created opportunities for the solution to be debated; work that was already accomplished during the research phase. Taking the time to lead with the research allowed us to better streamline the meetings and resolved any doubts regarding the solution.
- Create and Manage a new product project system. In addition to implementing our design thinking methodology, we made updates to how we presented UX solutions, partnered with development and communicated with leadership in effort to execute on our objectives.
Making space for UX has been a challenge, however efuneral has an amazing team who isn’t afraid to do the hard work. As my team and I continue to implement the Enterprise Design Thinking methodology, we understand success means have to continually iterate upon our product while also relying on the needs of our users to guide us along the way. I am proud of the work that we’ve done and look forward to continued evolution within the industry.