User Researcher
Cognitive Task Analysis for UI Design
Matching a design to user needs means digging into the unseen tasks they perform in their mind.
Context and Goals
Service Analytics (formerly Service Wave) was designed to be an out-of-the-box (OOB) analytics experience. The idea was to create and easy experience from data to insight by providing template dashboards that could be easily connected to Salesforce service data. Service teams were targeted because we believed their data and metrics were more predictable and standardized.
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What the product team needed was to understand what metrics are important to service teams and how they change depending on their role. Another research need was to get formative feedback for the designer.
Persona
The target personas was the End User whom we referred to as the "consumer of the data" but more specifically we initially targeted service managers with direct agents and service team leaders (directors, VPs, etc.).
Method
Cognitive tasks analysis is used to understand the mental work that a person does to accomplish their tasks that may not be consciously decided while working. Getting the metrics and data they used could’ve been found using a survey but it was important to get the "why" behind them and get to the core of their decision making and analysis.
Insights
Service Analytics pre-made dashboard for customer service managers to get an overview of support cases.
For service teams, keeping the status quo was the main objective. The moment metrics are not meeting the status quo, that’s when managers begin to problem solve and think of ways of preventing it from happening again. And that's a mental process of triaging that's directed by data.
“What it boils down to is whether or not the status quo is being met. When we look at the numbers, if they’re not where they’re supposed to be, we need to understand why.”
-- Director of Service --
This led to design decision to add conditional formatting to the metrics to provide a data “scent” of where the numbers are, so that at a glance people can see what needs their attention and what doesn't.
Examples of data"scent" to give the End User a quick indication of how their metrics are doing
Iteration
Once designs were made it was time to get feedback so that the team could iterate to improve designs. The prominent feedback was that there was a lack of actionability after exploring the data.
When service team members look at their dashboard they're triaging and asking questions. Each question is answered by a piece of data. When all questions are exhausted it usually ends up with a list of cases that need to be reviewed. Once reviewed either an email is sent, a meeting is called or some other action is taken in the Salesforce Service Cloud.
So we decided to add a data table at the bottom of each dashboard that would filter as the user "slices and dices" their data. We then added a new interaction that would allow the user to make a comment and other actions in Salesforce Service Cloud.
Hover over for when you want take action on a service case listed on the dashboard
It then opens to the case in Salesforce Service Cloud so you can accomplish your action item
Results
The product launched initially as "Service Wave" but has since been renamed as "Service Analytics" and is being integrated with our AI products (Einstein). The out-of-the-box model has proven to make it easier for teams to connect to their data and get insights.