Timing: 2025
Scale: 2 months

Problem

An Enterprise product that had been created by an engineering team was not being adopted due to its poor user experience. Leadership saw this as a potentially failed project. This team was skeptical user research would help, but was open to seeing if research could help inform a re-design of the product that would ultimately increase the adoption of this tool.

Approach

First, I aimed to really understand the problem. Why was this tool created in the first place and what problems was it aiming to solve? Were these problems the users were actually facing? To do this, I interviewed several project stakeholders and started mapping out my understanding on a Miro board. It became clear that there may be a mismatch between what the product was intended to solve and what the users were seeking.

Second, I crafted a research plan and timeline and transparently shared this with project stakeholders. The plan was to conduct moderated usability sessions over Teams to help us understand user impressions and understanding of the tool as well as their ability to execute specific tasks within the tool as well as how useful they found each section of the product.

Third, I conducted the usability sessions. We spoke with 11 users across several user groups - 7 engineers and 4 others in various roles within the digital team. For most sessions, the user experience designer on this project joined me to aid a quick knowledge transfer of areas of improvement in this tool.

Fourth, I analyzed the research while re-watching the interviews and reviewing my notes using affinity mapping in Miro. This analysis provided many impactful insights which I crafted into a research report to share with the stakeholders of this project.

Fifth, I presented the research report to stakeholders and proposed four key next steps to achieve our goal if improving this tool. The stakeholders agreed this was a good direction for the project. Those steps included the UX Designer designing a 2.0 version of this tool and then conducting an additional round of usability testing to assure that version 2.0 was increasing usability and solving the correct problems. This would allow for one final round of design improvements before handing the design off to engineers to build the improved tool.

Finally, I collaborated with the designer to assure the research findings were integrated into the new design and solved the identified pain points users experienced in version 1.0 of this tool. I created a new research plan for the next usability study focused on the new prototype. This usability study highlighted that a large majority of the pain points were solved by this re-design. Stakeholders were so pleased with the improvements of the tool that I was even asked to present this project and the impact of the user research improving this tool at a very high-level meeting. Ultimately, this research and re-design of the project was successful in improving this tool as well as getting a lot of buy-in from the company at a high level that user research is massively impactful in creating more impactful products.

Impact

• Moving forward, there was an increased for user experience research from stakeholders.

• This product had a significant increase in user adoption.
  

Key Skills Demonstrated:

• Problem Definition & Alignment – Clarifying the purpose of the tool, identifying mismatches between business goals and user needs, and aligning stakeholders on the problem space.

• Stakeholder Management & Communication – Interviewing stakeholders, transparently sharing research plans, and presenting findings in ways that built trust and buy-in for user research.

• Research Planning & Execution – Designing a structured usability study (moderated sessions, task-based evaluation, usefulness assessments), recruiting diverse user groups, and facilitating productive sessions.

• Qualitative Analysis & Synthesis – Using affinity mapping, reviewing recordings, and deriving clear, actionable insights from data.

• Collaboration & Knowledge Transfer – Partnering closely with a UX designer, ensuring research insights directly informed design decisions, and maintaining smooth handoff to the product and engineering teams.

• Strategic Impact & Advocacy – Turning insights into actionable next steps, guiding the redesign process, and demonstrating the business value of user research by securing leadership buy-in.

• Presentation & Storytelling – Delivering findings in a compelling way that influenced stakeholders at both project and executive levels.