HP DAAS (Device as a service) - Designing a new service for a hybrid workforce
Role: Design Lead (Service Design, Design thinking, strategy, user research, interaction, UX design, prototyping & testing)
Time: 12 weeks
OVERVIEW:
The after math of covid-19 had created a huge shift in the way people work. The workforce has become more distributed, which had driven a need to enable people to work from anywhere. More and more people started working remotely or are spending some days at the office and have a hybrid approach. HP took the initiative to provide a managed service for mid-market companies in order to help with challenges they are facing to equip their employees to do their best work and provide the best employee experience in a hybrid environment.
THE PEOPLE
3 product leads (Pedro, Nazima & Gaston), 2 research Leads (Gianna & Stephanie) and &US Agency (Research, workshops and visual design)
MY ROLE & BACKGROUND:
I was one of three design leads on this project. My resposibilities included:
Aligning and communicating with cross-functional teams and departments (Leadership, PMs, engineering, design and external 3rd party)
Responsible for research
Designing and facilitating workshops
Understanding systems integrations
Design from strategy to implementation (service design and product design)
I was brought into this project in its early stages, working with the leadership team across departments (Print, Lifecycle, Hardware, Services and Commercial). I worked very closely with Pedro Quinones (Design lead) to design and facilitate workshops and conversations to align and solidify the vision and value proposition, identify the end-user need, why is it important to our customer and what will we be offering.
I had the opportunity to be involved at multiple stages of the project. First, understanding the value and validating the concept. Second, identifying product features and setting requirements. Third, designing workflows and wireframes of the product to test and develop.
As the scope of work grew within our team. I eventually owned the whole pillar of managed services which included four major product lines: Active care, Wolf protect and trace, Business boost and Device as a Service in its entirety. I was also actively involved in helping grow the HP Design system and Design thinking tool kit.
PROJECT BACKGROUND:
DAAS+ (Device as a service) is a subscription based managed service that makes it easy for companies to drive performance by providing:
simplified IT operations
empower hybrid work inside and outside the office
MARKET RESEARCH
Overburdened IT staff - 84% of organizations are still adapting to address deficiencies in current operating models.
Distributed workforce - 72% of employees want flexible remote work options to stay.
Simplified Device sourcing - 78% of customers want to simplify the purchase process.
Endpoint security - 88% of IT decision makers say improving security of corporate assets and data is a top priority.
BUSINESS GOAL:
To create a cohesive, automated, secure and insight driven service that helps companies enable their hybrid workforce and improve performance.
(The scale of this project was very big and intersected with many different departments. We tackled multiple design challenges. Here i will be focusing on one of the challenges)
DESIGN CHALLENGE:
How might we design a digital service for mid-market (Companies with 100-1000 employees), fit for a hybrid world.
THE PROCESS
STAGE 1
VALUE PROPOSITION AND SERVICE VALIDATION
DISCOVERY RESEARCH
We began by diving into research, understanding some key assumptions from our stake holders and talking to our customer base to truly understand their pain points and build a value proposition. This included analyzing and filtering prior research, stakeholder interviews and many user interviews.
TARGET AUDIENCE / PERSONAS
After talking to many users and analyzing the data, we were able to identify our key audience and understand their challenges. This allowed to build a set of personas that we used as our north star in the design process.
Hybrid worker
Those working remotely at least 50% of the time are:
Relying on constant connectivity
Solving problems and adapt independently
Enjoying the flexibility and efficiency of remote work
Lack human connection
IT Decision maker
People purchasing, outfitting employees working remotely with IT equipment are:
Dealing with multiple standards and systems
Supporting staff consumes their time
Influencing decision making about change but don't make the final call
Business leader
Executive level leaders with a hybrid workforce are:
Surprised that productivity is better than before
The decision makers when it comes to investment in tech
Having the same issues as their teams (hybrid worker)
CO-CREATION
In order to provide a cohesive experience for the customer we began with setting up multiple design thinking sessions with the stakeholders and the customer. This included empathy mapping, team alignment sessions, assumptions mapping and test experiments.
(A lot of this was done online with use of MIro.)
SERVICE BLUEPRINT + SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
Working together with the key stakeholders and mapping out the customer journey and the business ecosystem.
SNAPSHOT OF THE SERVICE
TESTING THE SERVICE:
Qualitative data collection was extremely important in this project. User testing was conducted frequently. Our initial testing confirmed our assumptions. We ran multiple experiments like a mock webpage and put it in-front of the customer to see if the offer resonated with them. (These were done in collaboration with &US)
Insights:
Initially they couldn’t comprehend it because nothing like that exists in the market
Once explained got really excited and wanted the service right away
We also realized that ITDMs may recommend products but aren’t the final decision makers.
KEY CHARACTERISTICS
Side note: The requirement lead to many features. The features were divided and tackled by multiple teams. For example, one of the epic features was to build a portal for the ITDM and another was to build a portal for the End user. Both had very distinctive needs that had to be addressed. Below you will see a snapshot of one such feature for the ITDM portal.
STAGE 2
DESIGN & TEST THE PRODUCT
Our focus was on building and designing the portal for company IT Admins to easily monitor and onboard employees.
We went through the key stages of ideation, designing and iterating always pushing for the voice of the user and balancing the business needs.
IDEATION + PROTOTYPING
Monitoring lifecycle
Trying to provide a holistic overview with the users key needs, Proactive insights, Employee experience score, Customise and easy add information
Outfitting employees
Employees overview, Easy onboarding of employees and Easy tracking of employee onboarding status.
VISUAL DESIGN:
The next step after the flow gets approved it to work with a visual designer and implement the Veneer design system. That will help us address any issues with accessibility and provide cohesive interactions.
DEVELOP / BUILD:
After we have finalized the final flow and look and feel my team and I worked with the engineering team to develop. However, it important to note that in the hopes for a truly inclusive design process, engineering had been involved in the process right from the start and were working on proof of concepts as we design the final flow.
IMPACT
KEY LEARNINGS:
COMPLEXITY The complexity of this project was nothing i had dealt with before. If really required thinking through and connecting with experts across the company to be able to cohesively provide a working product.
TEAMWORK The scale of the research work could not have been accomplished without having a team of hard working people. It was important to trust and support each other.
COMMUNICATION Good communication was key. At any given time there was 50 - 100 people on a call wanting and needing to know where the work was at and who needed to be involved. This was across leadership, individual experts and third parties involved in the project.