Report Product Indicator
Report Product Indicator
Forrester specializes in competitive and strategic market research, offering an extensive library of over 80,000 reports designed to guide clients and organizations toward success. A key aspect of Forrester’s operations involves client consultations at the B2B level, primarily with C-Suite executives. Our Customer Success Management (CSM) teams rely on these reports to confidently recommend the appropriate Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to clients, as well as identify specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for optimal go-to-market strategies. Given the breadth of our library and the interactive nature of consultations conducted through live video guidance sessions, it became apparent that we needed a mechanism to empower our internal users and sales teams, ensuring they are well-prepared for these critical discussions.
Role
Design Lead, Researcher, Project Manager
Duration
February 2022 – August 2022
Process
Discovery, Design, Testing, Release, Iteration, Reflection
Tools
Figma, UserTesting, Teams, Jira, Slack
Role
Design Lead, Researcher, Project Manager
Duration
February 2022 – August 2022
Process
Discovery, Design, Testing, Release, Iteration, Reflection
Tools
Figma, UserTesting, Teams, Jira, Slack
Role
Design Lead, Researcher
Duration
February 2022 – August 2022
Process
Discovery, Design, Testing, Release, Iteration, Reflection
Tools
Figma, UserTesting, Teams, Jira, Slack
Discovery
Kickoff Meeting
The kickoff meeting brings together members from the design, research, and product teams for a virtual collaboration. They work collectively to craft a concise document, acting as the guiding north star that aligns business needs with project deliverables. This document is shared via email to ensure clarity and address project specifics. Within it, both the design and product teams reach consensus on critical aspects like the project start date, demo review dates, milestone check-ins, and the release to production date.
Establishing the Requirements
Enablement of Swift Identification: Empower customer success managers and sales teams to quickly and accurately locate the position of a report within the Forrester service catalog. For example, ensuring that users can find and access relevant reports within a few clicks, enhancing efficiency in their daily tasks.
Access Verification Capability: Provide a robust capability to determine whether clients have the necessary access to specific reports. This ensures that users can verify and manage client access seamlessly, reducing potential bottlenecks in information retrieval.
Cross-Published Research Highlight: Internally highlight research that is cross-published across multiple services and product offerings. For instance, allowing teams to easily identify and leverage research that spans different areas, fostering collaboration and maximizing the utility of available resources.
Meta-data Disclosure: Disclose additional meta-data details associated with each report. This includes providing comprehensive information beyond the basic report details, offering users deeper insights into the content and context of each research piece.
Establishing the Requirements
- Enablement of Swift Identification: Empower customer success managers and sales teams to quickly and accurately locate the position of a report within the Forrester service catalog. For example, ensuring that users can find and access relevant reports within a few clicks, enhancing efficiency in their daily tasks.
- Access Verification Capability: Provide a robust capability to determine whether clients have the necessary access to specific reports. This ensures that users can verify and manage client access seamlessly, reducing potential bottlenecks in information retrieval.
- Cross-Published Research Highlight: Internally highlight research that is cross-published across multiple services and product offerings. For instance, allowing teams to easily identify and leverage research that spans different areas, fostering collaboration and maximizing the utility of available resources.
- Meta-data Disclosure: Disclose additional meta-data details associated with each report. This includes providing comprehensive information beyond the basic report details, offering users deeper insights into the content and context of each research piece.
Identifying the Problem
The current product catalog, resembling a complex spider web, poses navigation challenges for sales teams, both starting from the outer edges or the center. This intricate structure, with layers representing various Forrester services, sub-services, and specific reports, makes it difficult for sales professionals to efficiently locate and manage information, impacting productivity and efficiency. The complexity implies a steeper learning curve and potential errors for sales teams, hindering quick access to essential data and responding promptly to client needs.
The First Challenge: A Complex Catalog
The product taxonomy portal unveils a file-system-like structure, akin to labeling and tagging the intricate Forrester spider web. Recognizing that research can reside at various levels within this web, the top level is designated as the “Service” level. Within these service levels, there are product groups termed “Initiatives,” which categorize research based on organizational objectives. Each initiative is then subdivided into research groupings known as “Phases,” designed to be directly actionable. In-depth discussions with the publishing team are scheduled to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the tagging process.
Introducing the "Access Verification" Tool
Nestled in Forrester’s array of internal solutions is the access verification tool, a resource predominantly wielded by Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and the sales team to confirm email access to specific services. While gaining prominence due to increased visibility, the tool, despite its utility, poses challenges. It delivers a comprehensive data dump tailored mainly for power-users, creating difficulties for non-developers to navigate through the information. Furthermore, its use entails introducing an extra tool or tab, contributing to the overall workload of daily tasks for users.
Dependencies and Technical Limitations
The Forrester product catalog and taxonomy are non-modifiable, and the existing product groupings remain fixed. Reorganizing services, priorities, and phases falls under a product-related initiative that is considered beyond the scope of this project. As a result, the primary emphasis is on surfacing information rather than reorganizing or redesigning data sets. Additionally, introducing new metadata is not feasible; the project is restricted to referencing and extracting the existing metadata to prevent unintended consequences that might jeopardize the release date and product stability.
User Interviews
While the product team possesses a thorough understanding of user needs, moving forward without involving the actual target audience is like planning a surprise party without knowing the guest of honor’s preferences. While the surprise may be appreciated, including the audience in the process somehow could provide more insightful guidance. Engaging with the users this way not only provides a more personal approach to demonstrate empathy but also empowers those who may feel frustrated or powerless. As a designer, it’s not just about delivering a solution; it’s about listening, having a conversation, and making users feel heard. This slight edge in humanity remains a valuable aspect, in my opinion, distinguishing it from AI.
Discovering the Pain Points
Given that internal users are the ones grappling with these frustrations, they haven’t held back in disclosing the current shortcomings in their workflows. To comprehensively assess the issues across different tiers in the organization, we cast a relatively wide net, including sales representatives, managers, and team leaders. This approach ensures a holistic understanding of the challenges faced at various levels within the organization.
Shari
Sales Representative
1. Tell me about yourself and your relation to Forrester.
I’m a sales rep who has to identify research and reports in our product library in order to best guide and equip my clients with the most precise information.
2. What is the most important mission objective in your day-to-day tasks when assisting clients?
If I look at a report, I need to know where it exists, whether it’s priority specific, priority general, etc.? Answering these on the fly is the job.
3. How would you describe your past or current experience in doing these tasks?
I have to jump between different user group accounts, the access verification tool, salesforce, and the website to answer all these questions. It’s a lot of things to have up in the air for just basic product knowledge.
4. If you had a magic wand, what would remove friction? What would bring you joy?
If I can get all the information related to where a report lives in one view, along with related information, then it’s much easier to collect your thoughts and properly guide the client.
Ted
VP, Principal Consultant
1. Tell me about yourself and your relation to Forrester.
I work with sales teams exclusively, including all reps, executives, while partnering with financial clients.
2. What is the most important mission objective in your day-to-day tasks when assisting clients?
First thing I would look at is which persona the client sits in, and which adjacent services the report lives in. Based on these you can begin to infer the most optimal way through a guidance session.
3. How would you describe your past or current experience in doing these tasks?
Consulting is a process that you get to know and fine tune as you do it over a long period of time. Everyone does it differently and most have their own style. With Forrester, the challenging part of the job so far has been just how complex our offering is based on all the different seats. Consulting style won’t change that fact.
4. If you had a magic wand, what would remove friction? What would bring you joy?
Most of my work is preparation. I collect everything I need related to a topic and put it in a presentation file so a tool that can expedite how fast I can get everything together will always be welcomed. I wish there was a way to simplify the product and change the way we package it ultimately.
Justin
Sales Representative
1. Tell me about yourself and your relation to Forrester.
I’m an enterprise level sales representative that manages four client accounts which combine in just over two million CV. I’m the primary touch point for them even before they reach out to a CSM sometimes.
2. What is the most important mission objective in your day-to-day tasks when assisting clients?
Trying to figure out if they are not reading reports due to access related reasons. Second, I look at the client in SF to check their membership in order to confirm whether they would ever have a chance to read it under their current membership.
3. How would you describe your past or current experience in doing these tasks?
It’s not easy. It involves jumping through a lot of different windows and tabs to connect the dots depending on which client you are talking to. Each inquiry is unique and nuanced that you can’t stay in just one of the windows to answer all the questions.
4. If you had a magic wand, what would remove friction? What would bring you joy?
Sometimes I just wish I could see which services a report lives in from the report landing page without having to jump through three different portals. There has to be a way to streamline getting information from the access verification tool and salesforce into one location.
Brendan
Customer Success Manager
1. Tell me about yourself and your relation to Forrester.
I manage seven customer success specialists. The majority are aligned to premier user west and some premier user east, meaning the Americas and APAC.
2. What is the most important mission objective in your day-to-day tasks when assisting clients?
First thing I do is go to salesforce to check my client’s access groups. Then I make sure they have a user ID and are registered before I start tracing the reports through the product catalog from the access verification tool.
3. How would you describe your past or current experience in doing these tasks?
Given the volume of my team, it gets tough to swim inside salesforce and the access verification tool all day. Since the two aren’t linked to our taxonomy tool, any miss-tags or errors make it that much more difficult to verify and make corrections.
4. If you had a magic wand, what would remove friction? What would bring you joy?
An easily accessible and simple to dissect source of truth. We already know we have a complex product. We should focus on enabling the customer success team to simplify the way we present and package our different services through the value of reports, and we should be able to do that quick.
The user interviews reveal common challenges faced by sales representatives and customer success managers at Forrester:
- Diverse Roles and Responsibilities:
Sales reps and customer success managers have varied roles, from managing large client accounts to overseeing sales teams and dealing with financial clients. - Support of Mission Objective in Client Assistance:
The primary mission is to quickly locate and understand relevant reports within the product library to guide and equip clients effectively. This involves checking client access, understanding personas, and navigating through multiple tools like Salesforce and the access verification tool. - Sub-optimal Experience in Performing Daily Tasks:
Users currently jump between different tools, including user group accounts, access verification tool, Salesforce, and the website, leading to a complex and time-consuming process. The challenges include dealing with the complexity of Forrester’s offerings, navigating through various windows, and handling errors in data tagging. - A Desire for Improvements:
Users express the need for a streamlined process, wishing for a tool that provides all information related to a report in one view. They emphasize the importance of simplifying the product packaging process, expediting information gathering, and having a unified source of truth accessible from the report landing page.
In summary, the interviews highlight the need for a more efficient and user-friendly tool that consolidates information, streamlines processes, and simplifies the presentation and packaging of Forrester’s services. The focus is on enhancing the user experience, reducing complexity, and enabling quicker decision-making in client interactions. net, including sales representatives, managers, and team leaders. This approach ensures a holistic understanding of the challenges faced at various levels within the organization.
The user interviews reveal common challenges faced by sales representatives and customer success managers at Forrester:
- Diverse Roles and Responsibilities:
Sales reps and customer success managers have varied roles, from managing large client accounts to overseeing sales teams and dealing with financial clients. - Support of Mission Objective in Client Assistance:
The primary mission is to quickly locate and understand relevant reports within the product library to guide and equip clients effectively. This involves checking client access, understanding personas, and navigating through multiple tools like Salesforce and the access verification tool. - Sub-optimal Experience in Performing Daily Tasks:
Users currently jump between different tools, including user group accounts, access verification tool, Salesforce, and the website, leading to a complex and time-consuming process. The challenges include dealing with the complexity of Forrester’s offerings, navigating through various windows, and handling errors in data tagging. - A Desire for Improvements:
Users express the need for a streamlined process, wishing for a tool that provides all information related to a report in one view. They emphasize the importance of simplifying the product packaging process, expediting information gathering, and having a unified source of truth accessible from the report landing page.
In summary, the interviews highlight the need for a more efficient and user-friendly tool that consolidates information, streamlines processes, and simplifies the presentation and packaging of Forrester’s services. The focus is on enhancing the user experience, reducing complexity, and enabling quicker decision-making in client interactions. net, including sales representatives, managers, and team leaders. This approach ensures a holistic understanding of the challenges faced at various levels within the organization.
Design
Bringing It All Together for Version One
It’s essential to note that the intent isn’t to hit a home run off the bat. Healthy development life cycles thrive on continuous improvement; thus, creating a strong, scalable foundation becomes crucial. Armed with a solid understanding of our users and the business requirements, enough information was gathered to step into Figma with a fairly clear vision of that foundation. Given the segmentation of the product catalog and the extensive library of reports, we anticipate working with multiple views and potentially large lists. This is where tabs and tables come into play, providing effective solutions for organizing and presenting the information.
Design
Bringing It All Together for Version One
It’s essential to note that the intent isn’t to hit a home run off the bat. Healthy development life cycles thrive on continuous improvement; thus, creating a strong, scalable foundation becomes crucial. Armed with a solid understanding of our users and the business requirements, enough information was gathered to step into Figma with a fairly clear vision of that foundation. Given the segmentation of the product catalog and the extensive library of reports, we anticipate working with multiple views and potentially large lists. This is where tabs and tables come into play, providing effective solutions for organizing and presenting the information.
Layout Variations of the First Release
Our main goal is to find a sweet spot between making it easy to go through lots of information and offering different ways to view it. We also want to include some extra details that support the main information. Think of tabs like different sections for various product lines and tables as maps showing where each report is in the big list of products.
Our challenge at the start is making sure there’s not too much information at once. So, in the first designs, we organize tabs, tables, and details into three main sections in a neat little pop-up. This helps users naturally see how things connect.
The first design kept things super simple to see how much info we really need to show in the product catalog. The second design added a bit more detail to see how people handle it. The third design played with how different elements stand out. Lastly, the fourth design is all about fine-tuning and organizing data even more for a scalable approach.
The Second Challenge: Unforgivingly Long Tables
As if navigating the intricacies of how the Forrester product catalog is structured and packaged weren’t challenging enough, another factor to consider is the varying lengths of tables at both the account level and account seat. The data retrieved by each report is contingent upon the account-level permissions tied to product subscriptions. Needless to say, some users have access to a broad array of different research.
Finalizing and Compiling the First Prototype
In our initial release, we embraced the first iteration of the simple design to gauge how users react to various ways of understanding data swiftly. The tool effortlessly enables us to gather all the specifics about reports and their locations directly from this modal.
This translates to a more streamlined experience for our internal users, eliminating the need to navigate between different tools to verify access or recommend client research on the fly. The starting point is conveniently placed on the report landing page, encouraging a seamless process for everyone to track and discover research, all starting from the report itself without delving into broader account details.
Testing
Findings From the First Round of User Testing
As expected, testing revealed challenges related to terminology clarity. Users faced difficulty locating the entry point on the page due to unclear labeling. Moreover, the tables failed to communicate product access effectively, leading to confusion among users when interpreting the data within them.
These insights from testing underscore the importance of refining terminology, improving entry point visibility, and enhancing the clarity of information within tables to ensure a more user-friendly experience in subsequent design iterations.
Design (Return to)
Updating the Designs
To elevate the user experience, we’re streamlining the empty state message by consolidating essential information onto a more detailed landing page and linking to it from inside the modal to give us some flexibility. The addition of counters to the tabs represents a simple yet impactful improvement, enhancing the overall user experience. Furthermore, we’ve polished the heading language to explicitly communicate that this tool is designated for internal use, not for clients. These refinements target specific challenges identified during testing, aiming to craft a more intuitive and user-friendly interface.
The Final Design Review
Before showcasing the demo to the business lead, we have a final design check with the digital experience team to make sure everything looks good and fits our brand guidelines. Even with a streamlined process, it’s important to get a fresh perspective to catch any mistakes. In Figma, we summarize the insights from user interviews to explain why we certain design choices were made. This helps my teammates understand the project while contributing with a novel perspective to make sure we haven’t missed anything obvious. After getting feedback from the design team and making any necessary changes, we take some time to wrap up loose ends before the big demo.
Presentation Day
The big day arrives. The final prototype is showcased to the business lead as we guide them through the proposed designs. Throughout the demo, we go over the prototype, briefly discussing the reasoning behind design choices, and outlining findings from user testing. Feedback is usually minimal at this stage, unless we’ve significantly missed the mark.
Documentation and Dev Pre-Flight
Release
Developer Handoff
Shepherding the Lost
Once the design files and documentation are passed over to the developers, we wait for the inevitable collaboration to begin once the logic starts to be built at the atomic level. These dialogs are relatively quick and most questions can be addressed either through Teams or Jira. Every now and then though, a meeting may have to be called. The more complicated inquiries could trigger a potential “redraft”, which is to say redesigning specific elements in the interest of maneuvering around potential showstoppers due to unforeseen tech debt or other back-end related issues.
A redraft is not necessarily subject to design approval, and is left at the discretion of both the designer and developer to ensure the ball is kept rolling. Redrafts are minor by design as the idea is not to impact the entire system with an obtrusive redesign.
Shepherding the Lost
Once the design files and documentation are passed over to the developers, we wait for the inevitable collaboration to begin once the logic starts to be built at the atomic level. These dialogs are relatively quick and most questions can be addressed either through Teams or Jira. Every now and then though, a meeting may have to be called. The more complicated inquiries could trigger a potential “redraft”, which is to say redesigning specific elements in the interest of maneuvering around potential showstoppers due to unforeseen tech debt or other back-end related issues.
A redraft is not necessarily subject to design approval, and is left at the discretion of both the designer and developer to ensure the ball is kept rolling. Redrafts are minor by design as the idea is not to impact the entire system with an obtrusive redesign.
Shepherding the Lost
Once the design files and documentation are passed over to the developers, we wait for the inevitable collaboration to begin once the logic starts to be built at the atomic level. These dialogs are relatively quick and most questions can be addressed either through Teams or Jira. Every now and then though, a meeting may have to be called. The more complicated inquiries could trigger a potential “redraft”, which is to say redesigning specific elements in the interest of maneuvering around potential showstoppers due to unforeseen tech debt or other back-end related issues.
A redraft is not necessarily subject to design approval, and is left at the discretion of both the designer and developer to ensure the ball is kept rolling. Redrafts are minor by design as the idea is not to impact the entire system with an obtrusive redesign.
Developer Demo (to the Design Team)
Once the developers complete the final build, a demo is arranged with the design team to verify that the designs and functionality align with the Figma blueprints. Typically, there’s a week of buffer time between the demo and the production release date, allowing for the sequencing and prioritization of any bugs and errors. In the fortunate circumstance where the software development process proceeds smoothly, the required remedies for this release are basic CSS fixes, addressing issues like incorrect margins, font sizing, and hover interactions.
Release to Production
Developers typically don’t require the full buffer week to resolve bugs. A second, and if necessary, a third demo is scheduled with the design team until a satisfactory release quality is achieved otherwise. After the RPI is released, an internal announcement is made to notify the user base and, of course, to celebrate.
Iteration
The Concept of Continuous Improvement
A fundamental principle of DevOps revolves around iterative releases and planned optimizations, emphasizing the concept of upgrades. This provides departments and project teams the flexibility to effectively roadmap, scope, and implement features. The approach enables thorough testing between release versions, enhancing the user experience with valuable quantitative data. This incremental strategy also facilitates a faster time-to-market compared to one-time release products.
Collecting Data for v2.0
- Assess the user experience:
Gather data on how users interact with the tool, identifying any pain points, areas of confusion, or improvements needed in terms of usability and navigation. - Evaluate the tool’s impact:
Measure the tool’s impact on users’ efficiency, productivity, and overall workflow. Understand if the tool is effectively addressing the identified challenges. - Identify any new requirements:
Engage with users to uncover any new or evolving needs and requirements that may have emerged since the initial release.
Further User Interviews & Note-Taking
Synthesizing the Findings
Since the user interviews are recorded, we can easily play them back to gather additional sentiments beyond what’s captured in the initial script notes. Some prevalent themes that emerged from this testing round included a need for more clarity around the product’s complexity. Users also faced challenges parsing through the table to identify the information they were looking for, which is less than ideal.
Updating the Designs and Documentation
The interface could better communicate access levels, especially in specific use cases due to nuanced product packaging. Additionally, there is a growing need to consider long-term scalability to streamline future versioning. Therefore, adopting a more sectionally oriented layout that can stack would be beneficial. This approach not only accommodates scalability but also facilitates easier integration of user feedback, particularly in the form of feature requests.
Design Demo (to the Development Team)
The same development team that worked on the release of v1.0 will receive the demo of the updated layout in a similar fashion as before, ensuring a streamlined process due to their familiarity. We maintain a standard two-week sprint as the rollout timeline for updates.
The 2.0 Release
There’s approximately a one-month gap between the 1.0 and 2.0 releases, providing users ample time to acclimate to both the tool and the idea that their workflows can be enhanced with this new addition. It’s crucial to afford users the opportunity to utilize the updated RPI before assessing our performance. This period allows for a more comprehensive understanding of how the changes impact user experience and workflow. The user base is alerted with an internal blog post on the Forrester intranet highlighting the optimized changes.
Success Metrics
Reflection
What Have We Learned?
Embarking on our mission to deliver clients an enterprise-level consulting experience, we discovered a parallel need for an enterprise-level support structure within our internal team. Through thorough internal interviews, a common struggle emerged—internal users grappling with multiple portals and tools for basic tasks. The perpetual need for numerous open windows and constant content switching proved detrimental to their efficiency. Addressing this, we identified a pivotal solution—consolidating users in a unified location to streamline workflows. Additionally, our exploration uncovered a demand for instructional prompts and educational elements within the platform.
- Unified Location for Efficiency:
Recognized the need to keep internal users in a single location to enhance workflow efficiency. - Struggle with Multiple Tools:
Internal interviews unveiled challenges faced by users juggling between various portals and tools for basic duties. - Demand for Instructional Prompts:
Identified a significant demand for instructional prompts and educational elements within the platform. - Clarity in the Moment:
Users strongly resonated with features answering questions and promoting clarity instantly.
Next Steps
As the tool transitions further into production and enters active utilization, resource allocation will be strategically directed towards addressing any identified bugs or issues. This approach prioritizes the ongoing refinement of the tool’s performance and user experience. The design architecture inherently possesses scalability, positioning it to seamlessly facilitate a streamlined release of version 3.0 in response to emerging business requirements. This strategic flexibility ensures the tool’s adaptability to evolving needs while concurrently upholding its stability and functionality during the interim period.