Content Services
Content Services is a Software as a Service (SaaS) product that enables digital transformation for businesses to securely access and manage various types of content like documents, images, and audio files. Providing employees to maximize their productivity from any location, at any time, while delivering an enhanced customer experience.
Role
Product Design Lead & UX Desginer
Duration
1 year
Collaboration
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Designers on Automation
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Development
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Product managers
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Content designers
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User Researchers
Context
Content Services is the new experience of a legacy tool formerly called FileNet. In 2021, FileNet transitioned into a SaaS product to increase its accessibility for users. The shift for FileNet to become Content Services SaaS, required for a Design Leader who could quickly grasp a complex tool, effectively collaborate with a team of developers and product managers who had not previously worked with a design team, lead a team of designers, collaborate with an assigned team researcher, and craft compelling user experiences.
Simplify and modernize the FileNet as it transitioned to the SaaS offering, Content Services within one year.
The Challenge
Since FileNet has been successful for our clients, our ambitions were to work fast to create a strong foundation that will continue to provide users the content services they need, while appealing to a broader audience as it transitioned to a SaaS offering.
Our goal is to provide an enhanced experience for content services administrator to successfully:
My Role
I took on the challenge and led the Design for the new experience of Content Services in addition to designing the new experience.
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Manage content: Creating metadata for end users to use when uploading and organizing their business content.
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Secure content: Defining who can access the content by creating or assigning roles to metadata to keep the content secure.
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Configure desktops: Design the user interface where end users upload and organize their business content.
Kick-off
To get the Content Services project started, I led and facilitates a 2-day Enterprise Design Thinking (EDT) workshop with Product Management, the Development team, our assigned Researcher, our Content Designer, and my Design Team.
I enjoy the EDT process because it allows all participants to contribute and share their ideas. The outcomes help us align on where we stand and set the vision and next steps of where we want to be. See my EDT certificates here.
Personal Insight
These are some of our completed EDT workshop activities and their objectives:
Leadership
During the workshop, I noticed the absence of a clear end-to-end user path based on a use case addressed by Content Services.
To address this challenge, I collaborated with three Product Managers to craft a story around one of our key use cases. This story served as a guide for successfully onboarding my design team members, obtain greater understanding of the product for myself, and after being validated with users, to help define the design of the new user experience.
Understanding the end-to-end experience enabled me to seize the design
Understanding the end-to-end in detail, enabled me to seize the design work essential for reaching the MVP, as outlined during our kick-off workshop in Stage 1. Together with Product Management and the lead developers, we met to prioritize each item and defined a roadmap to achieve our deliverables within the specified one-year timeframe.
Roadmapping
As my team and I worked on the design, new topics emerged and realigning was necessary, therefore these meetings continued to ensure ongoing alignment and prioritization on a monthly basis.
Research
Note: Our dedicated team researcher conducted the research presented on this section. It is presented to providing valuable context to better understand the project.
By collaborating with our researcher, we efficiently identified areas requiring answers to get a deeper understanding of our Content Services administrator. The outcomes of research helped us shape the vision for the new experience of Content Services.
Initial research conduced:
Defining our administrator persona
Secondary Research
30-minute interviews with 6 participants from interal IBMers focused on identifying any pain points they have witnessed while working with Content Services' clients.
Primary research
1 hour-long interviews with 10 content administrators. Focused on uncovering their responsibilities, team structure, pain points, and needs.
Work in Teams
Admin tasks are shared across a team of admins and/or other business users.
Different Levels of Expertise
The admin teams can have varying levels, each assigned with specific tasks.
Are Business Oriented
Moving to SaaS is shifting the focus from being technical users.
Insights
Contessa, the Content Services Administrator
Pain points
Assist with Getting Started
Admins do not want to depend on documentation for getting started.
Simplify their experience
Avoid sending them to different user interfaces to complete their work.
Use user-centric content
Prospective users are struggling to grasp FileNet's terminology.
Design
Based on the first research findings from user interviews, as well as competitive research, we understood Contessa, the Content Services administrator better. The next step was to start ideating on the new experience.
During the sketching and ideating phase, I took the complete Content Services experience into consideration, including how end-users would interact with the desktops built by Contessa (blue stickies). Although this aspect was beyond our current scope, considering it was important to prevent potential design challenges in the future.
Quick sketching
I continued the ideation, this time inviting my UX designer to explore more opportunities and to share our ideas as we moved into a low-fidelity wireframing of the different flows Contessa will go through while using Content Services.
Ideating
First ideation was done by me, presented by quick sketches above.
The new experience
Moving from FileNet to Content Services required a lot of learning. Together with the n-in-a-box (research, PM, Development, Content and Design), my team and I were able to learn the product and design the new experience of Content Services.
Remember the story my Product Manager and I defined after the workshop? Well, my Design team and I used it to design the end-to-end experience for Contessa, the Content Services administrator as she achieves her three main goals.
The story
Contessa's Goal
Imagine Contessa the Content Services Administrator works at a car insurance company and she is tasked to help customer service organize the car claims by performing the the following tasks:
Manage content
Create metadata which you could think as of "labels" that will help the customer service organize the claims being uploaded to Content Services.
Secure Content
Define roles and set up security to the metadata created. This will keep the content secured to be be accessed only by specific roles. For example, only customer services working on claims could view the claims to keep customer's information private.
Configure desktops
Design a space referred as a "desktop," where the customer service assistant will be doing her work including uploading and organizing the insurance claims.
Contessa creates the document class "Auto claim" and adds a description. This will help the customer assistant to organize the insurance claims based on the vehicle claim.
Flow 1: Document class creation
FileNet (legacy tool)
Content Services (new experience)
Contessa creates a property that will be used by the customer assistant to select when uploading and organizing the insurance claims. Properties provide more details about a car (document class) listed on the auto claim. For example, she creates the "car color property" which can be used to search or filter down large sums of content so that the customer assistant can find what she needs faster.
Flow 2: Creating a property
FileNet (legacy tool)
Content Services (new experience)
Contessa can link a choice list to the properties she creates. These can help provide more details from a list of options. For example, after Contessa created the property "car color" on Flow 2, she can now create a choice list with a list of colors so when a customer service uploads an auto claim and adds details about the car on the claim, she can select the car color from the list Contessa defined.
Flow 3: Creating a choice list
FileNet (legacy tool)
Content Services (new experience)
Now that Contessa has created her document class, added properties, and linked the necessary choice list, she needs to make sure her employees have access.
Flow 4: Set up security
FileNet (legacy tool)
Content Services (new experience)
Depending on a company's policy and requirements, content needs to be retained in the system for a defined period of time. Therefore, Contessa is able to add retention rules to the metadata created to define how long the auto insurance claims can stay in the system before deletion.
Flow 5: Set up retention
FileNet (legacy tool)
Content Services (new experience)
This is where Contessa would design the "desktop," the space where the customer service assistant will be uploading and organizing the insurance claims. The desktop can be designed to match the company's branding and present what is most valuable to the end-user to do their work.
Flow 6: Configuring a desktop
FileNet (legacy tool)
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Content Services (new experience)
A Glimpse Into Designing the
Home Page of Content Services
Let me show you the process of the transformation of a legacy tool to a modern and simplified experience with a clear example, the Home Page of Content Services. Before we get started, we need to go back to what it looked like.
FileNet's Home Page, the legacy tool, directed the Contessa to two different interfaces for task completion. It lacked a clear starting point, leaving her confused and often reliant on documentation to get started.
FileNet's Home Page
Where the user goes to assign roles and create metadata that will help users manage and secure their content.
Content and Accesss Management
Desktop Configuration
Where the administrators can configure a desktop, utilize the interface to upload and organize their business content.
Content Services Home Page Ideation
As a starting point, I aimed for a welcoming experience upon entering the tool, addressing the user by name. This not only allows Contessa to see her work but also empowers her to commence without navigating to another user interface or browser tab, which was a crucial pain point for the legacy experience.
The product is personalized to make Contessa feel welcomed and the UI space is easy to understand and empowers her to start creating.
First time use of Content Services
Returning and active user of Content Services
As Contessa returns to the product, she will see what's most important to her, along with graphs stating the completion of her tasks and representations of her work.
Additional collaboration opportunities
n-in-a-box Meetings
Twice a week, I hosted our team meetings with Product Management, the development team, UX Researcher, UX Designer, Content Designer, and Manager to present our ongoing work and gather feedback.
Terminology
Collaborated closely with content designers to reinforce our terminology by ensuring consistency across products and ease of use that involved more than just adhering to IBM’s design language.
Research
Supported our researcher in continuous research to test UX designs, validate Hill Statements, understand users, refine product terminology, conduct a Kano Survey, and oversee final user testing sessions.
Outcome
The final design of the Home Page enables users like Contessa to:
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Feel welcomed, as she was greeted according the time of the day and by her name
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Be empowered to start creating
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Get a quick understanding of her work within one screen
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Get a walkthrough tour to onboard to the experience and not depend on documentation
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Be able to perform tasks without having to navigate to another UI
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Organize the screen based on the specific task she focuses on
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See a feed of her teammates and become aware of what they have worked on
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Have quick links set up based on her personal preferences with the product
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Learn about the product and any new updates
Home Page Final Deliverable
High Fidelity Home Page
Challenges
Due to time constraints shared by the management team and the request to have a running product within a short period of time, I came up with a simple design solution that could address all of the best practices identified in our detailed design workshop.
UX Research validated the screen by conducting user testing the new updates and terminology that is best understood by users. Owing to the complexity of the product integration and documentation, it will take many release cycles to get this project completed.
A quick thanks
I am truly grateful for my team and their support!
As a lead, I have learned to leverage retrospectives and feedback as a way to grow as we identify opportunities for improvement. Their valuable feedback has empowered me to oversee the end-to-end design of the administrator experience, effectively meeting Contessa' needs and business objectives.
However, what I enjoyed the most while working with the team and leading the design is that I prioritized building the relationships among Product Management, Development, Sales, Content Designer, Management, and the Design team to improve our collaboration. Always finding a way to learn about one another even in a remote environment and on different time-zones.
Retrospective meetings end in a getting to know your teammembers. Here learning about the team members favorite place they have visited.
Accomplishments
The new experience of Content Services as a SaaS offering has already presented some impact.
Because this project is under an NDA here are other accomplishments achieved with the while working on Content Services.
D&UX Score Increase
Received a higher score on the overall design and user experience of Content Services graded by IBM's Design & User Experience (D&UX) committee.
Inspiring to Innovate
Inspired others to learn about our products and take proactive steps toward crafting innovative solutions.
Design Critiques
Established weekly Design Critiques for IBMers to share ongoing work and improve collaboration across teams.
Recognition
I received the Culture Catalyst Award as I led the way to rebuild the culture and collaboration in the Austin Studio.
My biggest accomplishment
The relationships build through my work are what I enjoy the most. It is truly fulfilling when people remember me for my contributions and make the effort to catch up when they are in town.
April 2024
Left to right: Watsonx Orchestrate Program Manager, Content Services Product Manager, Content Services Product Director, Innovation Product Manager, Business Program Director.
Innovation
As AI continues to evolve, I took the initiative to organize a workshop aimed at exploring innovative ways to enhance the Content Servives experience leveraging AI and existing technologies utilized in other IBM products.
With the support from leadership including my Design VP, I conducted a meeting and gathered information from a diverse team of designers, program directors, and product managers as we each are experts in various products to think outside the box. We were able to collect many valuable insights in these meeting.
During the workshop, I presented an overview of Watson Orchestrate, Watson Assistant, Watsonx.ai, Document Processing, and Watson Discovery as inspiration to create something innovative.
In only 3 hours, the attendees of the workshop and I came up with three innovative ideas. I presented these ideas on the one year deadline we had with the product. These have already inspired product teams in Automation to take action.
Presenting the outcomes of the workshop to team and leadership in a hybrid setting.
Feedback received
Matt Vest
Primary Product Manager & Program Director
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The niab sessions. Specifically, they were well organized with an agenda planned up front (which is crucial to make the best use of the time of participants who are quite busy), and the discussions in the niab meetings were very helpful. One aspect that initially didn't go well was the UX designers having a sufficient understanding of the product capabilities (which I readily acknowledge are quite complex!), but you and I were able to address that nicely after we recognized the problem. We addressed this by having a smaller group get together regularly to discuss the technical capabilities of the product so that we could ensure that designs take those capabilities into consideration to avoid inadvertently inventing concepts that would be prohibitively expensive to implement. That was an excellent example of adapting our approach in order to overcome an obstacle that emerged.
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I also think you did an excellent job of dividing the work among the UX designers into well delineated functional areas to maximize progress on building, reviewing, and iterating on prototypes rapidly.
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Using Mural to help capture and organize ideas was very helpful, and you and the team did an excellent job of putting the templates together prior to meeting(s) with the broader group, which allowed us to focus the meeting on the desired outcome rather than spending time preparing the the mural(s).
Natalia Russi-Vigoya
Senior Lead Researcher
Your organizational skills are something that I also noticed while working with you in Content Services. It allowed me to identify key research activities to support the team.
You are a woman of great ideas, and something that will help improving your leadership skills is to continue inspiring others to impact the work more, even though it may not be something you originally envisioned. You have done a great job to enable team members to challenge ideas to create a better outcome.
I appreciate your ability to support diverse teams. Your team-oriented attitude and capability to work enthusiastically with designers, developers, and researchers is unique. I love seeing your dedication and enthusiasm in all your projects and activities. Your commitment to incorporating user research into the products always makes a difference.
Lauren Mayes
Product Management Director
I really appreciate all of the work that you did on the CSAWS project, and feel that you were very focused on achieving the project goals, building an easily consumable interface, and sticking to our schedules and commitment. The user experience that was built has been very well received by clients who saw it, and my hope is that we will continue the work later in 2024, bringing the new user experience to our IBM Cloud and on-premises customers.
Takeaways
Working on this project taught me valuable lessons. The main one is the importance of coaching other roles on design best practices leveraging the Enterprise Design Thinking, as it help us create a safe environment to share our ideas, provide feedback, and to align as a team as we work toward a common goal. Since it was our team's first time working with an assigned Design Team, learning about these activities made it faster for us to get requirements, understand the complex tool, and work as a team.
If I could change one aspect of this project, it would be to establish a safe and collaborative atmosphere from the beginning through team building activities. Although I introduced team-building activities during retrospectives after design deliverables, starting with these activities in our first meeting would have improved our communication and build each other's trust from the start.
Regarding the designs, we had a one-year deadline and the roadmapping I conducted with the PM and Development Leads kept us on track. However, I wish I had advocated for innovation from the beginning rather than waiting until the end, as we delivered our designs ahead of schedule. Morover, I am grateful that I still underwent the innovation workshop, which enabled executives to take actionable steps not only on Content Services but also on products within the Automation organization. Leading and designing the user experience of Content Services has been one of my favorite tasks at IBM, and although I wish to continue it, I am enjoying my current role to continue impacting a broader spectrum.
After my deliverable of the UX Design and Leading the Design for Content Services, my expertise has been prioritized to support the Product Led Growth (PLG) Innovation Initiative led by Vice President IBM Software organization, Justin Youngblood. The work done within this initiative impacts products (39+) under Software business unit at IBM.
Collaboration
Throughout my time in the Automation organization, I have seen designers solving the same problem with different methods and terminology. To make our products more consistent, I encouraged collaboration and idea-sharing among teams. This time, I organized a workshop and invited everyone in the Austin studio who was involved in this project to join in.
Together we:
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Participated in the User Needs EDT activity to discover Contessa's needs when coming to the Home Page of Content Services.
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Reviewed internal IBM home screens to identify best practices, and discussed what to avoid when designing a home page.
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We reviewed products we use often to understand why they are so effective.
Home Page Workshop
Encouraged by the curiosity of others and the positive feedback from the workshop, I felt inspired to establish weekly Design Critiques for any IBMer in the Austin studio. Welcoming any role to share ongoing projects, gathering feedback, and enhancing visibility into various products, while increasing collaboration.
Personal Insight
Home Page Workshop
Design Critique
The insights from this workshop, helped me bring to light our ideation of the Home Page for Content Services.