INNOVATION DESIGN & SOLUTION MVP
Role: Lead Designer
User research
Workshop Facilitation
UX Design
Challenge: To stay competitive, our client had to change how they worked with customers. While they were a respected furniture manufacturer, they were losing business to competitors offering "smart furniture" and space-tracking services.
They asked IBM to help them modernize. Together, we explored how cloud technology and data could transform their business.
To build the right solutions, we dove into the complex challenges of the people who manage and work in modern offices, with special focus the challenges of maintenance
Client: Leading Office Furniture Manufacturer
BUSINESS FRAMING
We started the engagement meeting with our project sponsors at the client. We outlined with them a Business Opportunity Statement that would guide us as we worked through understanding the needs of out target users and exploring the capabilities of technology.
USER RESEARCH
We interviewed facilities managers and created Empathy Maps, but our key insights came from mapping the Ecosystem and Key Stakeholders that the facilities manager is responsible and accountable to, they are highlighted in yellow. The key people he engages with from our client are highlighted in pink.We decided to focus on the facilities manager’s Jobs to be Done and the Success Metrics he is measured on. We scoped in on reducing the Mean Time to Repair to achieve maximum impact for FM’s required outcomes. If we solved that, we believed it would impact reducing total cost of ownership, increasing employee satisfaction, improving safety compliance, and optimising maintenance.
CO-CREATION WORKSHOP
Together with Facilities Managers we mapped the furniture maintenance process from the report of an issue to closing the ticket, updating inventory and reporting. In each step we documented vendor touch points, actions, the systems used, key data, duration, and pain-points.
We captured the greatest pains to used them as a starting point to create User Needs Statements.
We brainstormed Ideas to address the User Needs and prioritised QR codes on furniture and RFID tags to track location. Each participant wrote a Storyboard to describe the users’ new experience and capabilities.
As each participant presented their storyboards, we collected all of the user capabilities described and used them to map the To-Be process. We highlighted the change to the systems touched, updated the data transferred, noted the difference in time saving for each step, and captured the benefits our users would experience.
We created a rapid prototype of the user experience (top of page) to generate excitement for the project.
We learned that a more efficient approach to achieve our client’s Business Goals would be to only develop the “smart furniture” and integrate the data into their customers’ existing workplace management systems. They would achieve their goals without the expense of developing software, at least for the time being. We mapped a series of MVPs and future ideas to explore.
