Interaction Story – Customer Engagement @ ChemiCorp
Iteration: 2
Date: 13.10.2009
Goal : To understand how end-users in ChemiCorp use the recipe management product to make it more usable Customer
: ChemiCorp, amongst the world’s largest fast moving consumer goods company, making soaps, shampoos and toothpastes
Location
: ChemiCorp Research Labs, Newark
Duration
: 1 week
Protagonist : Simone Schmitt is 24 years old. A year ago she joined the recipe management product team within Product Lifecycle Management. She is curious and interested in learning about how people really work and use her product. This is her first customer visit. Trigger : The product definition phase cycle for recipe management EHP6 is ongoing. Development will commence in a few months. The solution manager, Stephen Adams is based out of USA. He decides this is a good time to stage a customer visit, since the insights from the visit can be included into the upcoming development cycle. [He has a direct contact with ChemiCorp, and decides to [send a mail] to suggest a customer visit. ChemiCorp responds with encouragement and a pre-condition : they would like to connect developers in SOFTCORP. to their end-users, so developers must be a part of this visit. With this in mind Stephen Adams sends a mail to , Thomas Schulz, the development manager of the recipe management team, asking which developers might be interested. Most developers are planning to go on leave around this time. Simone expresses interest in joining this customer visit. Another colleague, a developer also joins . Simone plays the role of a developer and UI Designer. The solution manager, Stephen Adams creates a travel request for 2 people to travel to ChemiCorp, Newark from Frankfurt, Germany for 1 week. The request is approved. Stephen informs his contact in ChemiCorp of their itinerary. The contact welcomes them and suggests that they meet at ChemiCorps’s Research Lab in Newark on Monday morning. Stephen informs the team of the travel plan. The team is set to leave on Saturday evening. Today is Monday. The final team is 2 developers, one solution manager (from USA), one consultant (from USA) and one PLM director from SOFTCORP., Frankfurt. Key Phases : Before, During, After Summary: The learning goals for the journey were clearly articulated by the SOFTCORP. team before the journey began. These were not investment opportunity related, but general end-users related goals. However, in absence of a map of what to do next, ChemiCorp drove the agenda and we did not know how to propose a structure which is learning focused, rather than pain point focused – a natural choice for ChemiCorp, but a deadly one for SOFTCORP.. This predetermined the rest of the journey. Also, a lot of the overview material is something that was shown during the visit was best done within SOFTCORP., from publicly available sources and account managers, so that the time was spent exclusively on exploring how end users work and synthesizing insight on site and re-checking assumptions. A map is required to guide the overall journey of interactions required to develop insight from customer journeys
Beat = Interaction
DRAFT
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Iteration: 2
Interaction Story – Customer Engagement @ ChemiCorp
Date: 13.10.2009
Phase : Before Wednesday, 4 p.m., Coffee Corner of Simone’s floor Beat 1 : Simone meets with use experience designer Together they put together a list of questions they would like to ask ChemiCorp’s end-users. They’re not sure when and how the opportunity to ask these questions will arise but assume there will be a chance to do so. Saturday, 1:15 p.m., Frankfurt airport Beat 2 : The team meets at the airport After greetings, they check-in together so that they get a block of 2 seats. It’s an 9 hour direct flight to Newark. They check-in and board. Lunch is served on flight. Saturday, 4:20 p.m., JFK airport, New York Beat 3: The flight lands at JFK, New York at 4:20 p.m. They decide to spend the weekend in New York. On Sunday evening, they take a train from New York to Newark. From the stations they take a cab to the Embassy Suites hotel, located close to the ChemiCorp Research Sunday, 11:30 pm, Embassy Suites, Hotel Lobby Beat 4: They check-in to their respective rooms. The rooms are located on the same floor. They go directly to bed because it is in the middle of the night. Monday, 7:30 a.m., Embassy Suites Cafe Beat 7: Breakfast done, they decide to leave. Stephen has rented a car from Hertz. He and the team drive to ChemiCorps’s’ Research Lab
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Iteration: 2
Interaction Story – Customer Engagement @ ChemiCorp
Date: 13.10.2009
Phase : During Monday,8:30 a.m., ChemiCorp Research Lab, lobby Beat 8: The team is greeted at the lobby by [Stephen’s contact]. He welcomes them and walks them to the board meeting room. This will be their home for the next two days. He mentions that they have planned out an agenda for the next two days. And that their director will join them to give them an overview. There are 2 directors who are in the room for the whole time. (PDM director, …manager) Monday, 8:40 a.m. ChemiCorp Research Lab, Meeting Room Beat 9: They enter the meeting room. The meeting room is large, expensive and can seat at least 15-20 people. [A projector and a lap top has been set-up especially for the occasion.] Coffee and cookies are served to the group while they wait for the director to arrive. Monday, 9:00 a.m., ChemiCorp Research Lab, Meeting Room Beat 10: The director arrives. After an exchange of greetings, a round of introductions are done. [The solution manager introduces the team, pointing out the developers and their background and expertise]. The ChemiCorp team consists of the directors, [Stephen’s contact], [an operations manager] and several end-users and people from different areas who will listen in. The director has come in to give the occasion his support. The end-users will come in at the pre-determined slots in the agenda over the next two days. For every usability session a different end-user arrives. Beat 11: The agenda “SOFTCORP. Usability Session” is introduced by the director. It is two days of presentations from ChemiCorp’s side with a block of 7 “usability sessions” - demos by end-users at the heart of the sessions. The implicit goal is to show the pain points in using the product. The end-users , including power users will be called into the board meeting room and asked to demo with their managers still in the room. The focus is on PLM in general and includes items of relevance to other teams, Document Management, for example. The first day includes a overview of ChemiCorp including its vision, long terms plans and a [high level] business process. Each day ends with a 30 minute wrap up and the first 60 minutes of day two has a slot for follow up questions and resolutions. A list of pain points will be complied at the end of each day, with an automatic assumption that some action will be taken on them. The rest of the visit follows this pattern, with ChemiCorp loading the schedule to meet this goal. Some “new process” suggestions are added to the end of the schedule before wrap-up. There is no possibility of seeing specific recipe management related processes in action, or shadowing end-users and conducting interviews in-situ. Beat 12: Demo’s. The end-user enters the room and shows the process on the as ChemiCorp uses it. Sometimes it includes lead-user modifications made to make life simpler or less time consuming, for example a quick create recipe portal application
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DRAFT
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Interaction Story – Customer Engagement @ ChemiCorp Date: 13.10.2009 developed by ChemiCorp itself. Notes are taken by Simone and her colleagues during each session, with the sessions Iteration: 2
proceeding in broadcast mode. Beat 13 : Pain points are collected by ChemiCorp. At the end of the day, a wrap-up session is conducted by ChemiCorp to list the pain points discovered so far and noted on a ChemiCorp branded slide. Beat 14: Back in the hotel, the SOFTCORP. team collates their notes. Everyone has been taking notes individually of each session and compares notes to find the delta missing from each note. The notes reflect the operational nature of the conversation with most of the items talking about struggles, irritants and workaround to flows within standard transactions and optimization opportunities for them. There a some instances of new flows created by ChemiCorp, where SOFTCORP.’s flow was divergent beyond usefulness. There has been no opportunity to discover the life of the end user, from where key insights will emerge on what makes up core of her work and what is at the periphery. ChemiCorp’s process knowledge is interspersed with usage experiences with SOFTCORP.. Beat 15 : Dinner. ChemiCorp executives take the SOFTCORP. team out to dinner. Day 2 – 9:00 a.m., ChemiCorp Research Lab, Meeting Room Beat 16 : Plant tour. A high level tour of the plant confirm what’s was expected – workrooms are manual and paper intensive and the technology lags the state-of-the-art, since it does the job well enough. Bar code scanners are common. Mobility is slowly making its way to the shopfloor- laptops are becoming more common than desktops. Beat 17: New manufacturing design proposal. ChemiCorp makes a process improvement proposal for manufacturing design. It is interested in knowing how other customers handle this process from SOFTCORP., effectively looking at SOFTCORP. as a channel for learning as well as competitive intelligence. Beat 18: Quick Create Recipe demo – ChemiCorp shows its own portal application Beat 19: DMS demo – not relevant to the Recipe Management team Beat 20: ECM reminders – brings up “bug list” posted during CeBit. After the workshop ChemiCorp will post a ticket for an open issue
Beat = Interaction
DRAFT
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Iteration: 2
Beat 21: Day 2 wrap-up
Interaction Story – Customer Engagement @ ChemiCorp
Date: 13.10.2009
The team asks questions it has intended at the end of the day. The answers vary between decision points a user takes to general principles emerging out of the workplace. The team creates a collation of quotes collected over two days and what it intends to do with it, along a rough time frame. It places a request for additional context to the short listed items. This creates an implicit expectation that SOFTCORP. will be processing the information in some way, leading to a feedback loop from SOFTCORP. to ChemiCorp Beat 22: At the hotel – Stephen collects notes and collates it into one document. This will be linked with data ChemiCorp will send later and condensed into a Top 10 findings list. W ednesday Beat 23 : Team departs And arrives back in Frankfurt and arrive at work. They take the plane on Wednesday evening and arrive in Frankfurt on Thursday morning due to time zones. Beat 25: The mail from ChemiCorp arrives rich with details substantiating the requests made.
Beat = Interaction
DRAFT
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Iteration: 2
Interaction Story – Customer Engagement @ ChemiCorp
Date: 13.10.2009
Phase : After [projection] – Beat 25: 8 of Top 10 findings are included into the development cycle Beat 26: ChemiCorp participates in Specification Review – with the stated intent to check how many of the top 10 items have made it to the specification. Beat 27: ChemiCorp participates in the Design Review – with the stated intent to check that included items from the Top 10 list retain their conceptual integrity and the screen design matches their expectations. Beat 28 : ChemiCorp participates in Testing. The testers post messages nudging the product closer to what they need. Beat 29 : Development closes. ChemiCorp signs off satisfied. The team however has learnt more about solving one customers pain points rather than a deep understanding of the enduser, from where they can decide to reject items if it is not in the interest of lead, lag and average users using Recipe Management End.
Beat = Interaction
DRAFT
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