Feature
Capacity management is a core feature of the SaaS ticketing platform. It is designed to regulate the number of visitors within a space at any given time. It helps in maximising the revenue while maintaining a seamless customer experience.This feature also integrates with sales channels to reflect real-time availability.
Problem Statement
Customers can’t optimally manage the capacity of their space using the legacy feature. Due to this, they are either over sold or under sold leading to chaos and inefficient use of space. This situation caused frustration amongst customers and rise in customer complaints. Redesigning the feature will add value to the product and improve the customer satisfaction.
My role
Lead UX Designer
Project duration
12 months
Team
Product owner/manager, UX designer, Tech lead, Developers
Collaborators
Account managers,Reseller specialists, Design system team
Impact
Redesigning the feature added value to the product and improved the customer satisfaction.
85%
Beta testing customers gave a positive feedback for the new workflow
40%
Increase in efficiency and ease of usability for capacity management
63%
Customer inclination towards contract renewal
Process
Taking inspiration from How to Make Sense of Any Mess, the redesign was looked from a perspective of untangling workflows and realigning the requirements in a structured manner to achieve a well defined feature which aligns with customer requirements.
UX task mapping using double diamond
Mapped the steps of double diamond method with the development and delivery plan to define UX tasks at each stage. This helped in bringing the entire team on the same page with respect to UX activities.
Key issues with legacy feature
There were multiple issues raised by the customers. And these were validated by conducting a UX audit and having multiple stakeholder workshops. Key findings are highlighted below.
Scalability
Lack of design and technical scalability as none of the components are reusable. Information architecture lacks consistency and hierarchy. Visual elements are not aligned with the latest branding.
Software integration
Capacity is impacted by factors like staff availability, space renovation etc. and customers use different softwares for tracking them. But the legacy feature API is not efficient to integrate with other softwares.
Usability
A steep learning curve for each workflow makes it difficult to remember. And each task is standalone with no indication of next steps. There are multiple ways of performing the same task from different sections.
Dependency
Customers depend on success managers to help with capacity issues. And frequently reach out to support for learning the software and finding the optimal workflow based on their requirements.
Scope for error
There is no visual representation of the set capacity or a section to show all the capacities set for a specific duration of time. This increases the possibility of errors and capacity overlaps without user awareness.
Customization
The legacy feature is restrictive and requires development effort when a customer wants customisation. And this customisation cost to the company is high and impacts the ROI.
Why is capacity management required?
Capacity must be updated based on multiple factors. It can be space related like staff availability, space optimisation etc. or it can be due to increase in the number of visitors.
Who visits?
-
Individuals
-
Locals
-
Tourists
-
-
Groups
-
Schools
-
Tourists
-
When visitors increase?
-
Weekends
-
Holidays
-
Rainy day
-
Tourist season
-
Rare artefact exhibition
-
Festivals or events
Customer interviews
Interviewing multiple customers helped in understanding their needs and their unique approaches to capacity management. It also helped in learning the roles and responsibilities of various company employees involved in the decisions related to capacity.
Feature requests from customers
There were multiple issues raised by the customers. And these were validated by conducting a UX audit and having multiple stakeholder workshops. Key findings are highlighted below.
Information architecture workshops
Multiple workshops were conducted to decide which attribute needs to be placed in which section. This was partly associated to the capacity management but it was thought from a holistic perspective of the product vision.
Designs
Final designs were done based on the finalised workflows. The capacity management also lead to design of dashboard as a landing page. This dashboard gave an overview which complimented capacity management.
Usability study
The findings from the usability testing were documented to collate three types of information,
-
Usability of the feature
-
Define user roles
-
Define customer personas
All the required updates were categorised and added in an excel to discuss it further with the team and identify if a change requires,
-
redesign
-
development effort
-
change in flow
Next steps
After detail discussion with the team, priorities were set and the designs were updated based on findings. As the value of usability testing and customer interviews was highlighted, this step was included in the design and development process without any resistance from the stakeholders.