B2B Event Driven Software Research

UX research for event driven software.
Expertise

Client

B2B SaaS Product

Timeline

9 weeks

Challenge

We worked with another product research and design agency to provide user feedback for an event driven offering for a b2b platform. Standard Beagle’s senior researcher led the UX research that would inform the screen designs and provide feedback and recommendations on the results.

Our client wanted to expand its repertoire of integration solutions with an event driven architecture that could compete with other even driven solutions on the market.

Note: Because of agreements with our partner agency, we are withholding the name of the client and not able to show delivered work.

How might we meet users’ needs and make a new feature competitive in the event driven software market?

Scope

Our scope included stakeholder interviews, concept validation user interviews, and detailed reports of findings and solutions.

Constraints

We spoke with one stakeholder and interviewed five users on the mid-fidelity designs created by our partner agency.

Implementation

Our findings initially were integrated into wireframes for the client, and then the results of concept validation were reported.

Our Goal

Our goal for this project was to provide valuable insights that would drive the design of the wireframes and future development.

Our Solution

After meeting with stakeholders and receiving the newly designed prototype, we focused our user interviews on how well it lined up with users’ existing workflow and expectations.

Results

We made several recommendations based on our research:

  • Provide more assistance during the initial setup wizard.
  • Make certain steps clear during a first-time build.
  • Ensure users understand terminology.
  • Guide users through the link between the new software and the existing platform.

Our Process

Understand

We spoke with the primary stakeholder on the project to understand the market they were targeting, who the users are, and how the feature would work.

Stakeholder interview

The primary stakeholder walked us through the functionality and preliminary screens for the new feature. We gained an understanding of how this event driven architecture would work within the existing platform.

Feature prioritization

Based on our conversation with the stakeholder, we found the new feature would be released first as an MVP, then with two tiers- a basic and a premium version. Proposed features were prioritized by how integral they were to present.

Target persona

The stakeholder identified key characteristics of the target persona.

  • User is familiar with the industry and has a basic to expert level understanding of this sort of software.
  • User needs software that can handle complexity and scalability.
  • The user is familiar with the current platform.

Explore

User interviews

Based on stakeholder feedback and proposed screens, our partner agency created wireframes for key flows, which we used for concept validation. We tested five integration specialists who were familiar with the existing platform, as well as event-driven software.

Terminology

All users reported confusion around various terms used in the wireframes.

Insights and Opportunities
1

Terminology was not in line with industry standards or not clear enough, and therefore confused users as to what actions they were taking.

Setup screens

All users were concerned with the messaging on the initial environment setup that stated naming conventions could not be changed later. One user assumed no parameters would be configurable after setup.

Insights and Opportunities
2

Because of the finality of environment naming, users felt uncomfortable with the initial setup. Most users felt that naming conventions would need to be changed while working on the integration, as well as collaborating with other colleagues on conventions.

Calls to action

Users had trouble finding calls to action for their next actions. Some users were unable to find their next step, and dismissed the next step.

Insights and Opportunities
3

Calls to action needed heightened clarity to direct users to their next steps in a linear way.

Overall

Users liked that design systems matched the main platform. They praised the simplicity that made the platform easy to get acclimated to, and how it was applied to the new screens. Users also noted the dashboard metrics were helpful to have, and liked being able to change the time range of metrics.