ScoutAsia Transformation
A UX-driven redesign project to revamp the ScoutAsia product
A start to a roadmap
ScoutAsia is positioned as a corporate news monitoring platform for businesses in Asia or aiming to bring business to Asia. ScoutAsia gathers private company information and news in the region, where users are able to get alerts and monitor relevant companies in search for - investment, suppliers, business partners etc.
Motivation
Due to the current lack of proper UX and positioning - causing confusion to internal and external users, ScoutAsia does not have a clear target audience and lack clarity when one steps on the platform.
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As this is a large scale project, it will be split into several parts as projects to different product managers. 'ScoutAsia UX Rethink..' is an overarching project that gives rise to manageable projects that changes ScoutAsia section by section. As the UX Lead, I spearhead this project to provide a clear vision and direction for the entire Product Team, thus ensuring that all ScoutAsia's projects converge towards the same goal.
Discovery
To fully understand the current landscape of ScoutAsia, there are a few stages I went through.
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First, was to breakdown and identify the features, tools and assets of ScoutAsia.
A snapshot of the original ScoutAsia
Old Sitemap
By creating an overall sitemap/information architecture of the original platform, it made it easier to know what type of information we are to re-organise.
A small portion of the sitemap of the original ScoutAsia
Stakeholder, User and Market Research
Virtual 1:1 Stakeholder Interviews
Business Team:
7 Sales People in different regions to obtain customer feedback and sales people feedback while selling and managing their accounts
Product Team:
1 Decision Maker and 3 Product Managers to understand the product positioning and change in target users/features throughout the past few years since the beginning of SA
Customer Interviews & Surveys
Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, Australia
Competitor Research
Comparing features and functions of who Sales/Products considered as competitors vs ScoutAsia
A small snippet of a large post-it board of interview and research extracts
Insights
From the research phase, grouping together sentiments and feedback from users and stakeholders brought light to certain things. ScoutAsia as a whole, as well as certain comments about features make us realise that what they ask for might not. be exactly what they need.
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We came up with 5 key insights to guide us in the next phase of our project, these insights are also in line with the Product's branding and goals.
Intelligence, Forward
ScoutAsia does not look/feel ‘Smart’, you cannot convince users that we are technically capable if they can’t see it.
Unique Selling Point
We need to be clear on ScoutAsia's unique selling point, there is no where on the platform that we can pinpoint.
Content, Quality, Resources
Personalisation and Customisation
We have no clear target users, because ScoutAsia is too generic. There is no clear purpose.
Our users have different profiles, hence different needs – they only need what is relevant to them
Collaboration, Integration, Analysis
As a corporate tool, we should integrate into our corporate users' workflow, creating an environment within ScoutAsia where teams can work together without a hassle.
We are underutilising the data and news that we have, thus missing out on the value we can give to our users.
Old Customer Journey Mapping
Even with the current seemingly missing customer journey, we tried to imagine it and fit them into different touchpoints that the product was meant to provide.
As a corporate monitoring platform, SA failed at a lack of focus but with great content assets that have the potential to do more that lying only within the Identifying and Defining stages.
The Monitoring stage should be the bulk and the journey should extend beyond what it provides, as the real user workflow in their corporates does not stop here.
Define
With the current assets and functions within SA, how can we then create a great user experience, that suits what the users need, and want, aligning with the product and business goals? We have the guiding principles, we now have to bring out the potential that ScoutAsia was hiding.
Persona
We define our persona through the multiple sessions of interviews, and also back & forth with our business teams and CEO. Studying the types of companies that we target, as well as potential institutes that our sales teams are aiming to reach out, we crafted a 3 types of persona that are not too specific, but still able to be differentiated from each other.
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Goals, Purpose, Opportunities, Risks, Needs, Breadth/Depth of Information, Time Scale... are all defined down to each of our User Persona (not shown below due to confidentiality).
Ideation and Brainstorm
At this stage, we think about the key pillars that we have identified during our insights formation. Simply put, we target what a user is here for and what the business wish to achieve here - Fast and immediate updates, Corporate News Monitoring.
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Breaking down the walls on the current 'Target List' and 'Saved Searches', targeting the purpose of monitoring 'Alerts', 'My Board' was the way to go.
New Direction & Customer Journey Overview
With the mission and values of ScoutAsia, together with the product direction, I came up with a few key qualities that ScoutAsia should portray in the UX and UI:
Personalisation, Customisation, Smart, Instant, Convenient, Collaborative, Forwardness, Dynamic
The customer journey has several touch points, addressing the key qualities. Each persona also has a unique touchpoint through the journey (will be explained later in the process).
Design
Having defined the new ScoutAsia direction and getting approval from the Product Leader as well as communicating with the Product Managers, we went on to create the vision of ScoutAsia.
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This stage is crucial in this UX Project, as several projects will emerge and be tackled one by one to serve as a 'gradual upgrade' to the old ScoutAsia Platform. It will not be an overhaul.
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Information Architecture
Creating a new I.A. completely different from the original, changing the concept of Target List and Saved Searches into something more concrete and useful for monitoring - Congregating different types of asset/content in 1 single informative place (folder/board), for the purpose of monitoring and analysis, instead of just a ‘function’.
The I.A. shows how we make use of the current content sources and fit them into a proper customer journey and by user purpose.
User Flows
Creating user flows to ensure what we have in mind works, and to figure out the steps a persona will take.
Concept and Wireframes
Wireframes were made to portray the idea more clearly, especially to non-designers. The wireframe shows the main part of the new direction, having a purpose in monitoring. The idea of constant updates and alerts is also within this very main idea, introducing fluidity and dynamism.
A quick wireframe to visualise the main purpose of ScoutAsia
Note
This product transformation initiation took 3 months from the start to planning a roadmap for the subsequent projects to come. As the lead of this, together with the product team, we decided to roll it out phase by phase, feature by feature, through 3 things: the amount of effort required, the significant uplift to ScoutAsia, the benchmark to competitors.
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Even though the design process is laid out systematically, but it is never the case. We went back to revisit several parts as we define things and the ideas come more to shape. Eg. Persona, customer journey, etc. Once we had our features and defining touchpoints locked down, we begin our roadmap.
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I am very excited to see what ScoutAsia can become. However, it is a long-term project where the entire change may only be realised after another year or two, but we have already went ahead with 3 projects on the roadmap: Radar V1.0, Library V1.0, Onboarding.