Form architecture
Leading the redesign of an internal teams work form’s for sales to craft each unique opportunity in by restructuring the data architecture in their workflow to progressively aid to users.
Project overview
I participated in building an entirely new experience, RxAsset, custom to our internal sales team. It provides them a digital format alternative to their paper process today that automates, smooths, and eases their individual and team efforts.
While I worked on the majority of the overall experience, I first focused on the forms since it is the core of their work. The data they document there is the most valuable part of their case and it sets the foundations of it’s trajectory and how it impacts up-stream and down-stream teams.
My involvement: Determined research exercises, lead and conducted research, collected feedback and notes and analyzed conclusions, applied learning into UI.
Initiatives & Goals
Create a workflow that is faster to complete by allowing users to access any form at any time to complete with accuracy. In addition, store all information together in one, organized place and support editing capabilities.
Actions & Process
Observational testing
Form break-down research
Form anatomy restructure
Card sorting
UI design
Saving & editing designs
Results
Clean UI that supports easy way-finding
Allows user to freely move about forms and enter information as they learn
Form works with users, progressively adding new sections as it becomes relevant reducing extra noises
Information only needs to be entered once
Increased automation
Connects data to up-stream and down-stream teams for an easy cross-team experience
Step 1
Observational testing
Design asked end-users to walk through various tasks in their typical work day. During these sessions, I am looking to understand:
How are users thinking through their experience?
Where do users experience pain points? What are the pain points?
What things do users like and want to continue or elaborate?
How do users navigate through the site to find what they are looking for?
What other behavioral patterns and mental models are they practicing?
Form anatomy research
Step 2
The observational testing demonstrated there is lots of opportunity to enhance their work processes. I recognized that each field, each ask in their forms are unstructured, broken, redundant, and does not match the sales thoughts or follow the life of a sales case. I then set up an exercise to break down each field in their process today by collecting information with the following investigation
What is this field?
What does it do, what does it mean, how important is it to you and others, what kind of input is needed, is this necessary to your work, does this add any value to your work, can this be automated, is the label name accurate, is it required or optional
Does this field inform other fields?
Is this field connected to other fields, if so how, what happen to the related fields if the parents input changes, if a child input changes does that impact the parent, how does this field impact up-stream and down-stream teams
When is the information known?
When is it best to complete the field in the workflow, when does this field need to be ready for you during your case creation, what other fields should this be organized with, who is completing this field and when
Example of how information was collected. I took screenshot of the forms they work in and presented them to the end users to breakdown each field and gather detailed information about each one.
Step 3
Card sorting
From the previous two exercises I learned there is no linear matter a sales case is created in. Sales users move through the forms based on which information they happen to learn at the moment from clients and consultants.
Although there is no clean way to organize the forms, I asked sales users to participate in a card sort exercise to determine the most ideal order forms should be organized based on when users likely know the information to accurately complete it, which information sets the trajectory of later inputs and actions, and what makes the most sense to their mental models.
Participants were given a list of form names and asked to order them in their most ideal order they’d like the forms to be presented in and why.
Learnings
From observing how the sales team operates in their current process, understanding how the information they collect is gathered, and discovering how they prefer to work I learned
The sales team is limited on basic capabilities such as reaching a data field to fill with information they know. This causes them to bypass the system’s restrictions by entering dummy data just to move forwards and often do not go back to update with correct information. All of this causes poor quality inputs and inaccurate information for the team to makes sales bids from.
There is no privacy in creating their cases, meaning other teams have access to view sensitive bid information that they should not have access to. Because of this, the sales team avoids placing all work and documents together. This results to having different documents floating in different places causing numerous in-and-out, back-and-forth movements between locations in their workflow.
Each case is unique in which information it holds, the pace of the sale, and with path it takes. Every sale is completed in a non-linear fashion and users learn any bit of information at any time in which they need to be able to document in that moment.
The platform the team uses today, SalesForce, presents each and every possible data field that could be needed for any case. Since sales cases are unique, given the situation not every input is relative to the case. Displaying all possible fields is overwhelming, unguided, confusing, makes extra work, is extra noise, and doesn’t support the sales team properly craft and think through the bid they are to sell.
Restructuring the data architecture
Step 4
Following the various research, I mapped out each form’s data fields and noted everything we’ve learned and calculated statistics we can use to measure before/after and how we’ve provided improvements.
Screen capture of my documentation in mapping out today’s form structure and the details related to each.
Taking all that I’ve learn and thinking through the best way to match a data architecture that will follow those needs as much as possible, I began drafting different variations the forms can be structure.
Screen capture of how I drafted a new proposal in the form structure.
UI Design & Solution
Step 5
Today: SalesForce
Solution: RxAsset
The proposed solution for upgrading the internal teams sales procedures includes the benefits, and more, of what they were hoping for and excludes the issues they are experiencing today.
All information related to a case can be documented in one place to better organize their bids and work faster between information.
The system works with the users. Since each case is unique, not every field available is necessary. To avoid showing users fields that aren’t relevant, the system adds necessary fields into the forms as the user gives the system more information.
I structured the forms and fields to capture key pieces of information early on that determine which trajectory the case is to follow and sets the user up to be successful with the necessary inputs.
Users
FINISH