Support work can range from being a furious fire-fighting activity to a careful unraveling of someone else's code. An engagement often starts with an anxious client and an impossible timeline… just get it fixed asap. But what if this type of ad hoc approach is just throwing fuel on the fire and making things worse?
5. Typical Support
● fix//build it asap
● unhack my site
● install this module
● update my site
● make it easier
● finish my site
● train me
● move this thing
● this is borked
● need more stuff
● dude MIA
● security scare
● review my code
● I just need a themer
9. Hierarchy of Chaos
P1: Critical Impact – Site Unusable
P2: High Impact – Business Severely Impaired
P3: Medium Impact – Business Partially Impaired
P4: Low Impact – Service Fully Usable
10. Instill Calm in the Issue Queue
● Be responsive
● Develop intelligent audits
● Over communicate
● Under promise
11. Audits
● Site Audit
● Code Audit
● SEO Audit
● Security Audit
● Performance Audit
● UX Audit
13. Symptom vs Solution
Symptom: User finds it hard to fill out the form
on mobile
Solution: Needs to be able to estimate
10hrs of a ux audit to learn why/how people
are failing
19. Make Data Driven Decisions
● Your best friend: Google Analytics
● Implement fixes, test, analyze
● Communicate often
● Email marketing tool
● Social media
21. Channel Assessment & Re-Structure
● creating a consistent, cross-channel experience
● examine content categorization and topics
● create an intuitive mental model for users
● harvest buzzwords and common phrases from interviews
22. Horizontal Content Flow
● users are not visiting very many pages
● users not finding critical pages
● pages do not appear to have clear pathway (homepage hub)
● complementary content
● visual focus
23. User Scenarios Based on Problem Solving
● Identifying needs
● Understanding identified needs
● Isolating alternatives
● Choosing solutions
● Refining solutions
24. Supporting the workflow of new and power users
● Discovery
● Realization of Need
● Consideration
● Conversion
● Retention
25. Ideas for Benchmarking
● Value Proposition: perceived benefit to the user
● Relevance: perceived value proposition match their needs
● Clarity: perceived comprehension of offerings
● Anxiety: site elements (or absent elements) that create
uncertainty in the user’s mind
● Distraction: what users eyes are drawn to on a page (does it
help or hinder)
● Urgency: what incentive does a user have to to action
immediately?
26. Guerrilla UX
● Interview stakeholders by phone/Skype
● Getting feedback on wireframes or designs
● Making small changes and observing users reactions
● Observing users
● UX Audit
27. A new model: ‘Concierge Support’
● Issue
● Problem (symptom)
● Benchmark
● Solution
● Tasks
● Acceptance Criteria
28. How to model a healthier process
● Sales
● Team Members
● UX/IA
● Development workflow
● Tools
● QA
Show of hands
how many ppl offer support?
how many ppl of those support projects built by other developers
How many ppl are looking for support?
1 sentence - your challenges - GO
10 we write down
Introduce caregivers
This is the ‘what’ of support
Today we are going to talk about how to deliver value
Reference a client - caregivers
talk about the background
Budget
Timeline
Feature
Response Time
Quality
Today: Not about the support process but how to deliver value
Death by a thousand tickets
Managing Expectation
Middle 2 are the hard one - up for interpretation
If everything is important nothing becomes important
Clean out the garage analogy
Vanessa tells stories about contractor
100 design comps
built by a print designer
Pixelpushing nightmare about
not concerned about mobile
75% users are mobile
PPL who are closest to the biz dont really get to have final say in the effectiveness of the layout/design - the user does
Monkey interface example
TOOLS
Before you say yes, you ask for the full story as to why?
Don’t take just a sliver of action on the site
Vanessa - Emergency care vs a holistic approach to health
Multichannel
Med to large biz already have analytics but the client has not looked at it
Look to re-organize flat or hierarchical categorization into a multifaceted topic structure for better contextual content presentation.
Content curation becomes more effective because the connections are made naturally whether the user uses a navigating, browsing or searching style.