understanding the client

UNDERSTANDING THE CLIENT

UN

DERSTAN

DIN

G TH

E CLIEN

T: MID + PRIM

AVERA

MID + PRIMAVERA

Meghan Conley Charles H Lee Andrew ahn

© 2012

2

Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Cameron ZahnIllustrations / Photography copyright © 2012 by Charles Lee, Holly Betz, Nicholas Coia, Jonas Milder, Meghan Conley, and Andrew Cameron Zahn

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced–mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying–without written permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Andrew Cameron ZahnBook design by Andrew Cameron ZahnMasters of Industrial Design at The University of the Arts212 South Broad Street, 5th FloorPhiladelphia, PA 19102

First printing April 2012

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION PAGE 4

METHODOLOGY PAGE 10

RESEARCH / SYNTHESIS PAGE 20

PRESENTATIONS / DELIVERABLES PAGE 50

SUMMARY / NEXT STEPS PAGE 58

INTRODUCTION

5

“A TEAM MEMBER IS AN INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR”

6

ABOUT US We are user centered designers / facilitators of conversation who use the design process to establish opportunities and solutions. We use design tools such as; brainstorming, mind mapping, affinity diagramming, shadowing, eth-nographic research and rapid ideation. Our pro-cess is the most important thing for the way we design.

Clockwise from top left:

Charles Lee, Holly Betz, Nicholas Coia, Jonas Milder, Meghan

Conley, and Andrew Cameron Zahn

7

P R I M A V E R A

ABOUT ORACLE Primavera is a local software company that was established in 1983. Primavera produces Project Management Software for large industries like oil and gas, transportation, and construction. Their P3 software, which launched in 1994, pushed them to the forefront of the industry. Currently, P6 is their core software line. In 2008, Primavera was acquired by Oracle. Oracle is a multinational computer software company.

Members of the Primavera team

8

DESIGN BRIEF

The University of the Arts MID design team was collaborated with Oracle/Primavera in early Sep-tember, 2011. They asked us to provide a de-sign approach to help them better understand their internal perspective of the Primavera user through the defined user roles. The “user” is a customer who interacts with the P3 and P6 prod-ucts during project management. P3 and P6 are the core products that Primavera produces for their clients.

The central roles of Primavera’s users:

• Project Manager• Resource Manager• Team Member

Cherie Hinson during Doodle It

10

METHODOLOGY

11

“IF YOU SAY TO A CLIENT, ‘RESOURCE MANAGER,’ THEY WILL LOOK AT YOU LIKE A DEER IN HEADLIGHTS”

12

TM

PM

RM

We interviewed employees from five different de-partments within the company; Design and de-velopment, Sales, Support, Testing, and Consul-tant. Through these interviews, our goals were to gain insights into the internal understanding of the Primavera user while also understanding the relationships between departments.

Interview questions were carefully designed into four different sections. - Individual - Company - About User - Knowledge on 3 different roles (Project manager, Resource manager, and Team member)

The idea behind this breakdown, to focus first on the individual and their role before moving into questions regarding the company culture followed by the relationship with the various users.

INTERVIEW PLAN

INTERVIEW STRUCTURE

13

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

#

Interview Localworkspace

conference room

Name:

Dept / Title:Time: : am/pm

Individual

Company

Product/Client Interaction

Client Roles

Individual

What is your current role and what other positions have you held with at Primavera?

How long have you been an employee?

Can tell us more about your responsibilities, daily routines, etc?

What is your typical work �ow? Directed/Self guided?

What level of communication do you have with other teams?

5 minutes

Product/Client Interaction

Can you describe the typical Primavera client?

In what industries do they come from?

What level of contact do you have with these clients?

Are you familiar with the roles: Resource Manager, Team Member/Contributor, Project Manager?

15 minutes

Client Roles

How would you de�ne these roles?

How would these roles interact with P6?

Do you feel these categories are accurate?

Is there anything else that you would want to say, or something that I didn’t ask?

15 minutes

Company

Can you describe the environment or Primavera?

Can you de�ne the P6 product?

10 minutes

Do you feel this environment has changed since being acquired by Oracle?

15

FRAME ITThe interview was separated into three stages, Frame it, Ask it and Doodle it. At the beginning of each interview we asked the interviewee to se-lect a frame in which to have their photo taken. They had several frames to choose from ranging from very basic to quite ornate. This selection was a way to incorporate a fun element and also allow for the design team to gauge an under-standing of each individual’s personality. Each photograph that was taken was used later dur-ing the synthesis process to help to team create an employee profile.

Lou Troila during Frame ItOpposite: Paula Hamilton during Frame It

16

Ask it was the second stage were we conduct-ed the actual interview. The first part focused on the interviewee, asking questions such as “How long have you worked at the company?” and “What are your roles?” This gave the inter-viewee a chance to feel comfortable and open up to interviewer. The second part focused on the company as a whole asking about the work environment. The third part asked about their

relationship with the users. Lastly, we asked question their knowledge on the three identified roles; Team members, Resource manager, and Project manager.

While we had a structured plan for each interview, the process became more organic towards the end as we began to build trust with each person.

ASK IT

Andrew Zahn and Lou Troila during Ask It

April Pugh and Holly Betz during Ask It

17

18

April Pugh working on Doodle It

19

To conclude the interview on a playful, positive note, we ask the interviewee to doodle a rep-resentation of themselves. This activity helped us to further understand each individual’s personality.

DOODLE IT

Paula Hamilton working of Doodle It

RESEARCH / SYNTHESIS

21

“THE ROLE OF PROJECT MANAGER CAN BE VERY DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE ORGANIZATION THEY ARE IN...”

22

INTERVIEWS

23

Holly Betz, Meghan Conley, Andrew Zahn, Charles Lee, and Cherie Hinson during an early interview

25

Our research process consisted of various inter-views across departments at Primavera. These interviews were conducted at both the main of-fice and over the phone. We thought it was im-portant to observe people in their work environ-ments in order to gain a better understanding of their daily routines. Some of the participants were more comfortable speaking away from their desks and preferred to meet in a closed confer-ence room. Since some employees were located off site, several interviews were conducted over the phone. We learned a lot of valuable informa-tion through the phone interviews but lacked the opportunity to experience the participants in their work environments. The initial project goal was twenty to twenty-five interviews, but due to last minute cancellations and difficulty coor-dinating meeting times, the team was limited to twelve interviews.

INTERVIEWS

Charles Lee and Holy Betz during an interview

26

Charles Lee and Meghan Conley scheduling interviews

INDIVIDUAL SYNTHESIS

27

sis process. Mapping out a mental model helps to create a user profile and tell the story of that particular employee at Primavera. These models later informed our group synthesis as we began to connect the individual themes together and create collaborative profiles. Figures 1 through 12 show examples of these mental models.

Once the MiD group had collect the data from the various interviews we began a process of sense making called synthesis. The first step in our synthesis process was to individually review the recorded interviews and extract key themes and statements from those interviews. Making this information visual is a key aspect of the synthe-

Andrew Zahn transcribing interview data

GROUP SYNTHESIS

Individual Interview Synthesis: Figure 1.


28



29

30



31



32



33



34

INTERVIEW RESULTS

Can you define the P6 product?: Research

Easy to input data but hard to extract it

Current focus is on making it more user friendly but in turn created too many features that make it very complicated to use

Geared towards project managers, working on a product entrepreneurial level

Product centered and not customer driven, lacks some of the key features of P3, and “focused on the fluff and not usability in the ‘trenches’”

Pieced together product; some users actually interact with P6 or maybe just get reports from it. Some use other tools like Excel.

Design / Development

Support

Sales

Quality Assurance

PM/Consultant

What level of Communication do you have with other teams?

Very little contact with other departments

Casual weekly contact in regards to training and internal support

Communicates across multiple teams

High level of communication with other departments: Support, Strategy & Development

High level of communication with all other teams


Support

Sales

Quality Assurance

PM/Consultant

Synthesized information from previous 6 pages.

35

What level of communication do you have with Primavera Users?

No user contact

Phone & email based user contact. The service request feature is directed towards support

Indirect contact, at least one layer of separation between QA and Strategy

Were previously users, now support users with direct contact

Direct user contact to understand the users business challenges


Support

Sales

Quality Assurance

PM/Consultant

Should be Executive, Manager, Team Member and Admin

The Project Manager is charge of overseeing everything

The Team Member is an individual contributor interested in one project at a time; finishes and then move on

Roles interact with P6 differently depending on size of project

The Resource Manager determines resources needed & appropriates people, materials & equipment to work


Support

Sales

Quality Assurance

PM/Consultant

How would you define the roles ‘Project Manager,’ ‘Resource Manager’ & ‘Team Member?’: Research

36

Team Member Role Defined

“A Team Member is an individual contributor”

-Testing

“Interested in one project at a time, finish and then move on.”

-Testing

Resource Manager Role Defined

“If you say to the client, ‘Resource Manager,’ they will look at you like a deer in headlights.”

-Sales

“Resource Managers do some staffing [and] work at the highest level of strategy. Knowing if we do this kind of project we’ll need these resources and we don’t have them.”

-Sales

MULTIPLE LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING: SYNTHESIS

37

Project Manager Role Defined

“Interested in how the overall project is going”

-Testing

“The role of project manager can be very different depending on the organization they are in... But typically has the overall accountability for the project, it’s the question of how much data entry they are doing, and that’s dependent on the industry.”

-Sales

Research Summary

Disparate understanding of user

P6 is robust yet complex

Little collaboration between groups on direction of P6

Products released with bugs on quick turnaround

No end-to-end user testingP6 is not very user friendly

38

GROUP SYNTHESIS

39

Andrew Zahn, Meghan Conley , Nicholas Coia, and Charles Less during group synthesis

40

GROUP SYNTHESIS

P6P3

User

User

Strategy

Strategy

Dev

Dev

P6P3

User

User

Strategy

Strategy

Dev

Dev

demonstrates the balance of influence between the user, the strategy department and the de-velopment group in the creation of the original project management software, P3. The second shows how that influence shifted in the more recent, less successful P6 product.

As we created the group profiles and collabora-tive mental models of each interviewee, we start-ed to see patterns in the responses. These iden-tified patterns were very important in framing our overall understanding of the problems that existed within Primavera. One discovery is illustrated in the two diagrams above. The diagram on the left

41

down to employees. There was very l i t t le evidence of inter-department meetings and regular cross-team collaboration. This lack of communication lead to very desperate under-standing of direction and knowledge of the end user.

An important aspect that we learned was the lack of communication between departments. Direction on product releases comes from a team of VP’s referred to as the S1 team. They inform the CEO’s of the various departments on the company direction which then gets filtered

ENVIRONMENTAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EACH DEPARTMENT

MINOR COMMUNICATION BETWEEN TEAMS

DELIVERS FOCUS TO INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENTS

TOP DOWN

TELECOMMUTINGTELECOMMUTINGTELECOMMUTING

42

GROUP SYNTHESIS

Once we had created the profiles of each em-ployee, our next step was to do a side by side comparison in order to find common phrases and themes. The diagram on the right shows an example of this comparison and the high-lighted themes identified. These themes were important in framing our problem statements. The three statements that emerged from this portion of synthesis were:

“The push to meet deadlines on a complicated product is decreasing the quality of the product and essentially hindering Primavera’s growth”

“Primavera is currently not incorporating end-to-end testing of the client interaction for de-velopers/designers and therefore is not user focused.”

“There is an established culture of top-down micro-management of filtered informations/di-rection

Identifying these two statements was an impor-tant step for the team, and after we were able to frame the problems, we were then able to start working towards possible solutions.

43

White board showing group synthesis of individual interviews

44

MENTAL MODEL: SYNTHESIS

APRIL

Tester4 yearsTeam member

Loss of freedomIncentives taken awayEverything filtered from

Upper management“Major assumptions are in place”

Perception is filtered down Wants more testing + feedbackNo trust since merger.

PRATHIBA

Tester13+ yearsTeam member

Good user environment

Info is filtered down through support

BA’s want more contract with customers

PAULA

Tester4 yearsTeam member

Frustration Too many Micro-managers

Quality has gone down/ more complicated

Good managers need to understand team Members

Everything gets pushed asideWants end to end testing

RON

Support4 yearsTeam member

Office is “DEAD”Supports risk analysis software

Acquired by Primavera

So looks different + easier to use

45

SARYN

Support5 yearsTeam members

Casual/relaxed Environment

Customers want video tutorial

DENNIS

Support8 yearsManager

Started with Oracle

Casual / Relaxed Environment

Seems very removed from the corporate Environment

CHERIE

UXA18 months x 2 Independent

Push down environment

LOU

Director, Sales Enablment20 + yearsManager

Employees reluctant to accept that they “Are Oracle”

Synthesis of individual interviews

46

Nicholas Coia, Charles Less and Meghan Conley during group synthesis

47

FORMULATED PROBLEM STATEMENTS

THE PUSH TO MEET DEADLINES ON A COMPLICATED PRODUCT IS DECREASING THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT AND ESSENTIALLY HINDERING PRIMAVERA’S GROWTH.

PRIMAVERA IS CURRENTLY NOT INCORPORATING END-TO-END TESTING OF CLIENT INTERACTION FOR DEVELOPERS / DESIGNERS AND THEREFORE IS NOT USER FOCUSED.

THERE IS AN ESTABLISHED CULTURE OF TOP-DOWN MICRO-MANAGMENT OF FILTERED INFORMATION / DIRECTED TO AN UN-TRUSTED GROUP OF EMPLOYEES.

48

It became more and more obvious through our synthesis of the data that there was little to no contact between the development group and the end user. This created a disconnect with the development of products. The diagram on the right demonstrates the life cycle of the P6 product. The strategy department determines the needs for any product enhancements and upgrades. They then direct the development de-partment on production specs, the development team then designs and builds the new product. That product is tested in house to determine bugs. Once bugs are found, they have the op-

tion to fix those bugs or there is a work around on that particular problem in order to meet the predetermined release date. The product is re-leases and the user then elicits feedback on the performance directly back to the Strategy department. This information is then filtered as it is passed onto the Development department. There is never any direct contact between the group that designs the product and the group that uses it.

GROUP SYNTHESIS

49

DesignSoftware Build

Test DetermineBugs

V.x.x Released

Defer Bug

Y

Fix Bug

N

Bug Work Around?

Feedback

Strategy

Des/Dev

Direction

User

PRESENTATIONS / DELIVERABLES

51

“IT GET’S ME WORRIED THAT WE DON’T KNOW WHO OUR CUSTOMER IS THROUGHOUT THE ORGANIZATION”

52

STEP, JUMP, LEAP

After the MiD team completed our synthesis of the information gathered through our research we formulated three final recommendations in-corporating a user centered approach. These findings would be presented to the senior lead-ers within the Development group.

The design solutions were broken down into three stages; step, jump and leap. The Step, would be the implementation of user surveys. Surveys prove an excellent resource for receiv-ing feedback directly from various user groups and can cover several aspects regarding a prod-uct. The surveys would be easy to implement and provide almost instant feedback.

The second stage, the Jump, would be to include end user testing prior to the release of each new product. This affords the ability to ascertain in-formation regarding usability of digital interfaces. This testing could include eye and mouse track-ing, navigation analysis, along with user and end goal analysis.

The Step and Jump phases would allow for an opportunity for facilitated collaboration across various departments within Primavera. Bringing

these different groups together to synthesize the data and brainstorm discussions around stragetic planning would produce a more unified product.

The third stage, the Leap, would incorporate user studies through shadowing and direct ob-servation in the work environment. This affords a unique perspective and understanding of how the user interacts with the digital interface on a daily basis.

53

USER SURVEYSDESIGN OPPORTUNITY

Surveys prove an excellent resource to aggregate baseline information on the users focus

• Most & least used features• Navigational opportunities• Years of product use• Top goals during product use• Comfort using product• Available for future user testing?

STEP

JUMP

LEAP

FacilitatedMeeting

ImplementFeedback

End UserTestinTestinT g

UserStudy

UserSurvey

54

END USER TESTINGOPPORTUNITY: DESIGN

End user testing affords the ability to ascertain information regarding the usability of digital inter-faces

• Eye & mouse tracking• Navigation analysis• Understand use hierarchy• User goal analysis• User needs analysis

FacilitatedMeeting

ImplementFeedback

End UserTesting

UserStudy

UserSurvey

STEP

JUMP

LEAP

55

FACILITATED COLLABORATIONOPPORTUNITY: DESIGN

Using design to bring departments together in a collaborative manner by facilitating:

• Research & Synthesis of Data• Brainstorming Discussions• Mapping Strategic Plan• Direction on User Feedback

FacilitatedMeeting

ImplementFeedback

End UserTesting

UserStudy

UserSurvey

STEP

JUMP

LEAP

56

USER STUDIESOPPORTUNITY: DESIGN

Through shadowing and observing, designers can gain a unique perspective and understanding of how the user works.

• Understand user roles• Client interaction with P6?• What are the users wants and needs?• Users workspace and process?• What problems does the user encounter?

FacilitatedMeeting

ImplementFeedback

End UserTestinTestinT g

UserStudy

UserSurvey

STEP

JUMP

LEAP

57

FacilitatedMeeting

ImplementFeedback

End UserTesting

UserStudy

UserSurvey

STEP

JUMP

LEAP

SUMMARY / NEXT STEPS

59

“WHEN YOU OPEN MICROSOFT WORD, YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE A DOCUMENT. WHEN YOU OPEN EXCEL YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE A SPREADSHEET. BUT WHEN YOU OPEN PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE, YOU ARE LIKE ‘WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO HERE?’”

60

SUMMERY There was some initial concern that the Senior Leaders within the Development group would not be receptive to the delivery of this sensitive information, but the feedback from the presenta-tion was quite positive. They were very receptive and not surprised to hear of our findings. The VP of the department agreed with the lack of user involve-ment with the development of P6 and the problems of a top down approach to design with a lack of overall communication throughout the orga-nization. Our proposed next steps included pre-senting these findings to the S1 team and then working with the Development group to begin implementing the designed solutions.

61

We hope to continue our collaboration with Pri-mavera in the future in order to help them imple-ment the changes we have suggested.

Jonas Milder, Charles Lee, Andrew Zahn, and Nicholas Coia during the final client presentation

62

GLOSSARY

63

Cultural ProbesInformation gathering packages based around the principle of user participation via self-documentation that reveal perceptions and behaviors within or across cultures.

Draw the experienceAsking participants to visualize an experience through drawing and diagramming which can debunk assumptions and reveal how people conceive of and order their experiences or activities.

ShadowingInvolves researchers immersing themselves in the lives of people in order to observe day-to-day routines, interactions and contexts.

Guided ToursAsking participants to lead a guided tour of the project-relevant spaces and activities they experience to help them recall their intentions and values.

Cognitive Task AnalysisList and summarize all of a user’s sensory inputs, decision points and actions to identify potential bottlenecks where errors may occur.

Time Lapsed VideoRecording movements in a space over an extended period of time to be later viewed at an increased speed. This provides an objective, longitudinal view of activity within a context.

EthnographyA form of qualitative research that requires immersion in the natural contexts upon which work, play or culture are experienced.

Contextual InterviewConducted in the environment, or context, in which the service process occurs allowing interviewer to both observe and probe the behavior they are interested in.

Extreme User InterviewIdentify individuals who are extremely familiar or completely unfamiliar with the product or system and ask them to evaluate their experience with it.

Secondary ResearchSupportive information including published articles, papers and other pertinent documents to develop an informed point of view on design issues.

Activity AnalysisStudying in detail all tasks, actions, objects, performers and interactions involved in a process.

Personal InventoryDocument the things that people identify as important to them to catalog evidence of their lifestyles.

Unfocus GroupAssemble a diverse group of individuals to encourage rich, creative, and divergent .

Empathy ToolsCreate tools that alter your experience to understand the abilities of di�erent users.

RESEARCH

64

PersonasFictional pro�les developed as a way of representing a particular group based on their shared interests.

Card SortAsking people to organize cards spatially, in ways that make sense to them, revealing expectations and priorities about intended functions.

Flow DiagrammingVisually representing the �ow of information or activity through all phases of a system or process.

Social Network MappingDiscovering di�erent kinds of social relationships within a user group and map the network of their interactions.

A�nity DiagramA method of data organization intended to de�ne categories based on likeness of information.

Concept MapGraphical method for organizing and representing knowledge supporting meaningful learning through associative and hierarchical connection forming.

Mental modelA cognitive representation and simpli�cation of a complex system.

Zoom OutA method for understanding and visualizing the larger system of people, products, services and environments within which a particular design exists.

Customer Journey MapA structured visualization of a users experience with a system.

Stakeholder MapA visual or physical representation of the various groups involved with a particular service.

SYNTHESIS

65

ScenariosIllustrate a story line describing the context of use for a product or service.

Experience PrototypeSimulation of the experience using the product revealing unanticipated issues or needs.

Role PlayingIdentify the stakeholders involved in the design problem and assign those roles to members of the team for them to enact activities within a real or imagined context.

StorytellingA method for sharing insights and new concepts through the use of compelling narratives.

StoryboardingA series of drawing or pictures that visualize a particular sequence of events.

Co-creationEngaging people with di�erent backgrounds and roles to work collaboratively as part of the same team, in order to examine and innovate a given experience.

PROTOTYPE + TEST

understanding the client

Documents

company design

primavera user

andrew cameron zahnbook

cover design

design process

design tools

individual company

p3 software