Herding cats: practicing UX in the b2b world
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A presentation given at HCID 2015 organised by City Interaction Lab
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Herding cats: practicing UX in the b2b world
- 1. Herding cats: practicing UX in the B2B world Jessica Hall Lead UX Manager @mycatistheboss
- 2. Reed Business Information (RBI) Part of
- 3. Summary • UX work in B2B has specific challenges • How to herd cats • B2B apps need you!
- 4. What is B2B?
- 7. Same users but context of use is different
- 8. Buyer User
- 9. Constraints
- 10. Politics
- 11. Other challenges • B2B users have their own business priorities • They are busy and cannot spare much time • Product changes can impact their productivity
- 12. How to herd cats
- 13. Get out of the building
- 14. Find out how they do their job
- 15. Go where lots of users are
- 16. UX Jam
- 17. When to go on location and when to conduct remote interviews Go in person when: • you want to understand their job in context • customers are based in the same area or attending an event • you are at the early stages of a project Interview remotely when: • customers are based all over the world • telephone/online meetings are more convenient for them • you are testing minor changes often
- 18. Identify and design for the workflow
- 19. Partner with your users
- 20. Challenging can be fun
- 21. Finally, let’s look at some typical B2B products
- 22. Sharepoint.
- 23. Oracle expenses.
- 24. but there can be challenges… ADP Payslips.
- 25. B2B apps need you!
- 26. o credits ://www.flickr.com/photos/snaxor/8162501205/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/stickwithjosh/406833748/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/ter-burg/580737870 ://www.flickr.com/photos/40765798@N00/202734059/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/artisticrichmond/2716147621/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/31068346@N05/13113816704/ ://www.flickr.com/photos/shoutsfromtheabyss/5004387061 https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbence/279744368/ ://www.flickr.com/photos/phploveme/3035730829/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/tumblingrun/7834037780/ ://www.flickr.com/photos/rdubois/3601009923/ http://www.gratisography.com/
Editor's Notes
- Hi, I’m Jessica Hall. I work as Lead UX Manager at RBI and I’ll be talking about cats. And B2B.
- Firstly perhaps you are wondering who and what is RBI? We are a division of Reed Elsevier / RELX. We provide information and online data services to business professionals worldwide and these are our brands. It is a big company - we have over 3000 employees and customers in nearly 200 countries.
- Here are 3 things I’ll be covering today. Firstly I’ll outline why working in UX in a B2B setting can be challenging, in fact sometimes like herding cats. But herding cats is possible and I’ll explain how. Then we’ll find out why B2B apps need you.
- So what is B2B or Business-to-Business?
- The traditional image that defines B2B is the office suit and the idea of designing for professionals…
- …whereas B2C is about home time, beers and TV
- But those boundaries are increasingly blurred. And its important to remember that b2b users are also consumers. The context of use of your product is the main difference between b2b and b2c. B2B does come with specific challenges however…
- …The user and the buyer of a product can be two very different people. So you may need two sets of personas. And you need to communicate how your product works and its value in different ways to each group.
- …The B2B users often cannot just buy any product. Which product they use can be influenced by company policy, contracts and budgets. There are a different set of constraints.
- There are also corporate politics to consider as decisions are often made by several people or will need to be signed off at different levels.
- In addition, B2B naturally have pressing business objectives that are different to yours. They tend to be very busy and under pressure. Product changes can not just cause frustration, but can impact their productivity and ultimately their revenue. So this makes UX work difficult to conduct at time, a bit like herding cats
- Here are some tips based on our experience.
- Most of you will have heard of Lean Startup and Lean UX, which states that“the facts that we need to gather about customers, markets, suppliers, and channels exist only “outside the building.” Startups need extensive contact with potential customers to understand them, so get out of your chair and get to know them.” We think this goes for every size company – sometimes users will come to you but more often, you have to go out and find them.
- A key focus for anyone designing b2b products is how users do their jobs – what are their goals, who do they work with, what are the pain points. We use a ‘discovery approach where we send stakeholders out to conduct interviews with users in their workplaces and bring back the insights to discuss in workshops. This is one of the ways we identify areas to target new product development.
- Scheduling and conducting a number of interviews with b2b users can be time-consuming and expensive. We are lucky that we run and attend conferences and events worldwide where users of our products are often in attendance. We’ve been using this opportunity to schedule and run interviews and testing sessions. It is a really good opportunity to conduct lean research.
- As part of this we’ve developed a UX Jam method. This involves running workshops with product managers and other stakeholders at the same location as a conference our users are attending. It means we can create rapid prototypes and test them with our customers during their coffee and lunch breaks. It has proved really productive in quickly moving forward designs with user feedback integrated.
- It may not always be possible to go where your users are, but the best times to make the effort are when you really need to learn the detail of what they do in their jobs. Shadowing or contextual interviewing is really valuable, if you can gain permission to go to workplaces. This is particularly useful at the early stage of a project, when you may not know what to build. When you are further down the line with a design, you may need to go back to users several times to get feedback. Remote interviews by telephone or online can be a good way to do this, especially if your customers are global. B2B users will sometimes prefer a telephone or online meeting as it is easier to schedule.
- The goal for much of this research is to identify and design for the B2B workflow. We began to focus on this a few years ago, speaking to our customers until we had a clear understanding of what they did before and after using our products. This is really important for new product development as you will see issues and workarounds, such as customers printing screens to take notes or checking information against multiple sources. It’s great for coming up with ideas that have a clear benefit for the user and will save them time.
- Look for opportunities to partner with your users. It isn’t always possible to offer incentives for participating in b2b research – for example, in the banking industry. However we find users are often motivated to help us understand their workflows if they see we are trying to make their working lives easier. In the past we’ve set up user panels, beta groups and customer councils to collect regular feedback. It’s also important to show what decisions you make as a result of user feedback and keep the relationships strong.
- So hopefully I’ve shown that challenging projects can also be fun and rewarding.
- Finally let’s remind ourselves of some everyday b2b products you may use
- This is Sharepoint. Admittedly it has recently redesigned.
- This is Oracle expenses. Hmmm.
- And this is ADP payslips.
- Which I think proves that B2B apps need all the UX attention you can offer.
- Thanks and please come and talk to me or Gurur if you’d like to find out more about RBI.