RC Segments
Seamlessly Segmenting Contacts
Enabling Health Researchers to communicate effectively with specific Study Participants ensuring active longitudinal study participation
Our Team
I worked on this project during my personal time because I felt it was a strategic move for our business and users. After I shared my research and designs, product leadership was pleased and it set the vision for the feature so we identified ways to add the changes to our product roadmap.
Other contributors:
I met with our customer success lead for user input (after working on other teams, I could empathize with our users; but, wanted someone close to this team to validate the need and urgency)
A few colleagues shared internal user test feedback
A content writer helped me understand our operand terminology
Timeline:
4 weeks while prioritizing and delivering on my existing workload and onboarding to lead the Enterprise Team from the UX Strategy Team, and managing another designer
Our Why
Discovery enabled me to understand and align our business goals and user challenges
Business Goals: Customer engagement and retention were a priority due to unpleasant customer and user feedback about our contact segmentation module. Our current design did not meet our reputation of being user-centric, reliable, sustainable, stable, and performance driven. There was an opportunity to acquire customer sites if we were a more effective solution that competitors.
Customer Challenges: The All of Us Research Program relied on longitudinal participant health data requiring Study Staff to follow up with Participants encouraging their participation over time otherwise the program wouldn’t be effective. They also didn’t have a centralized solution across their site so they were paying for a variety of communication tools making the process expensive and impossible to track holistic impact of study staff follow up and participant engagement.
Enterprise User Challenges: Study Staff were required to send targeted follow up emails, direct mailers, and event materials to prospects and participants, inviting them (back) into the platform to complete the program’s core protocol. Segmenting contacts effectively was critical for effective outreach. These users were often not formally trained marketing or sales people so weren’t familiar with typical processes and jargon of sales communication efforts.
End-User Challenges: Participants may lack awareness of new program donation opportunities. Often over-communication caused drop offs while miss-communication depleted participant trust in the security of the program. An example: If participants were asked to send bio-samples after recently providing them–they would be confused and unsure of the safety of their information.
Research and Discovery Overview
Understanding and empathizing with our users
Gathered user input from the customer success lead
Audited feature workflow and terminology
Collected usage data comparing the number of users who have created but not saved segments to those saved but not used to those saved and used
Mapped user experience from getting the participants contact information through creating the segment and saving campaigns or case lists
Campaigns were emails or direct mailers sent from health research staff to participants to encourage participant engagement and retention
Comp analysis of other communication tools to identify industry standards that I could leverage and validate our terminology
Researched best practices and heuristics I could infuse
Definition of success:
Merge business, customer, and user opportunities
Simplify the segmentation workflow enabling enterprise users to confidently target specific participants based on their engagement
Leverage existing segment API through Iterable
Measured by
# of Segments started VS saved VS used in a campaign or case list
# of Participant protocols completed after a follow up
Feature Audit
I performed an initial analysis of the existing feature. Our users frustrations were obvious and relatable. The feature needed some adjustments.
My Initial Key Findings:
Confusing terminology making it difficult for users to understand if the segment actually filtered accurately; A quick internal test with four colleagues proved none were confident
Confusing hierarchy preventing users from knowing where to click
Unable to take action after creating the segment increasing cognitive load when our users add this segment to a communication vehicle (a case list or campaign) so there’s potential to optimize the workflow rather than forcing users to open those separate modules, then remember and search for this segment by name in a long dropdown field
Technical integration limitations Using Iterable API
Not responsive preventing access on tablet/mobile devices
Inconsistent styling of fields and missed opportunity to utilize tooltips and error messages to provide clarity
Findings I discovered as I iterated and tested:
Shortcuts could save time because our users often followed up with the participants who met the same set of core criteria
Achieve clarity through tooltips or links to tutorials or our knowledge base
Provide a participant count within segments before the end of the creation process could increase our user’s confidence in their selections and reduce burden of making changes
Consolidate participant and prospect libraries under this Communication tab so our users won’t jump between tabs when contacting participants
Before: Example of the original feature before user intervention
Before: Example of a user creating a new segment with the original feature
Understanding the Operand Terminology:
This was the core of the user experience and the main cause for complaints/confusion heard from users so I wanted to start here. I asked myself “what do they all currently say, what could they potentially say, why/how would it improve the experience?”
Understanding terminology
Applying use cases to better understand terminology
Program milestones filters: I recommended to remove and rename several of these.
Demographics filters: I recommended to remove and rename several of these.
Geographic filters: I recommended to remove and rename several of these and suggested to change the way the information was input by our users because they couldn’t just type a zip code or copy bulk zip codes, they had to enter them individually and the empty box would populate after all of them were entered.
Campaign activity filters: I recommended to remove and rename several of these too, especially after evaluating other marketing campaign services; namely, Iterable - our api, ConstantContact, MailChimp, SendinBlue.
Competitive Analysis
This helped me understand how others were labelling operands and formatting their segments to see what expectations our users might have and what trends we could potentially leverage.
This is a collage of 4 competitors screens with notes for areas I found most interesting to influence my design.
Additional screenshots for reference from those competitors with an emphasis on campaign activity.
Designing a Vision
Ideating, prototyping, and internally testing
I started mid-fidelity levering a mix of existing component libraries
I created a prototype to explain the new workflow to the product team and other designers
I proposed changes and sought buy-in from product leadership to influence our roadmap
Initial segment tab and getting started with shortcuts
The best part of this redesign is the use of common segments and structured sentences that explained the segment in plain language so it was easy to understand.
When we rolled out this enhancement, we talked to our users to uncover their most commonly used segments, ie: participants who have completed registration, consent, and the first set of surveys. Creating that segment would take our users a long time when inputting every single qualifying field
I suggested our current experience change to “advanced customization” for users who were already familiar with it, since it was a direct integration so keeping it wouldn’t require maintenance
Shows if our users have not yet created any segments. I also added the ability to find contacts (prospects and participants) from this same module in a different tab so our users didn’t have to jump around within this workflow.
Shows a list of existing segments created by our users. I added the ability to watch a tutorial for any new users as well.
Shows the top area populated and the ability for our users to simply select a shortcut to edit. I came up with these based on my user and program knowledge.
Once our user clicks the shortcut, they see it here, in written format, using the proposed terminology. I also added the ability to see how many people fit this segment.
Editing segment shortcuts
I proposed two ways to potentially edit the common segments. Internal testing suggested option 1 was easier because option 2 showed everything available at once which was excess information if they only wanted to adjust one of the four filter categories (milestones, demographics, geographies, campaigns). Also, at the end, I suggested our users have an action item to start a campaign with this segment where they would be taken to the campaign workflow with this segment preselected instead of forcing them to remember the name and search for it.
This follows the step above, if our users clicked “edit” there, the 4 categories they could change would highlight in blue.
Option 1: form fields appear for the selected category. They had the option to view all categories at once, just like option 2, or they could focus on one at a time.
Option 2: all form fields appear at once and matched the filter summary.
After finishing their segment, they would be taken to this screen where they could see the overall number of people in the segment or view the segment list to confirm accuracy of the segment. They could also jump into the campaign workflow which is the whole purpose of creating the segment.
Outcome
Business: Increases in platform adoption and engagement with Segmentation, Campaign, and 1:1 Case List features as changes were implemented
Team: We had a new collaborator and SME in our Customer Success Manager, growing our collective empathy and user-centricity
Customers: Saw us a reliable partner iterating quickly to their feedback
Users: Enabled to create segments faster and more confidently ensuring they reach the correct participants; Most positive feedback was for the Shortcuts
Product Vision: This gave us a path forward and we rolled out the changes iteratively in the following order:
Updates to the operand terminology
Added tooltips to form field labels and a link to the Knowledge Base
Added shortcuts for the most commonly used segments
Incorporated design system components and consistent error messages making our product more scalable
Added descriptions during segment creation
Added a CTA to Create a Campaign/Case List with the new Segment
Reflection
Empower Designers: It was exciting to strategically impact the product roadmap and earn trust from Product Leadership
Presentation Skills: It was suggested to me to be more outcome focused rather than simply sharing the prototype, rather I should explain the business and user value of the changes I was suggesting
Team Buy-In: It was suggested that I get async buy-in across the product team before presenting to the full team
Metrics: I could have created a Tableau dashboard to track the impact of these changes overtime such as, feature usage, connected feature engagement, and active participant usage from campaigns