The Offers Platform
I redesigned an internal tool that helps Sales managers create promotional incentives for large company clients.
Roles
UX designer
UI designer
Research support
The Offers Platform
The offers platform is a tool used to create and track large scale promotional efforts at United. It’s used by the big-account external sales team to incentivize large companies to be overall loyal United customers by giving their employees exclusive promotional incentives.
The offers platform had been in the works since 2017. I was told I was a year too late to give input into the business requirement documents and there was limited say in what specific requirements could be added or taken out. Though the technicalities were defined to a certain extent, but the team had no real process as they were not a product team. They were a part of the personalization organization that had very little experience working with UX.
I saw the test site (see below picture) and knew we needed to test this with the ones who would be using the tool – the Sales team.
The original offers platform.
Problem statement
I aligned with the personalization team and helped reduce the scope of the large platform ask to a phased approach. The first phase problem statement we agreed to tackle first was:
“Sales managers need a way to request a new corporate offer and track results of current offers.”
Data visualization and flow iterations
My research partner advised we test with a new and improved design, instead of the original designs to get an understanding of what informational displays could be helpful.
We partnered with a data visualization team at United to use Spotfire to integrate a more visually helpful information display. I iterated designs based on the technical considerations.
Once we had the dashboard squared away, I started to revamp the entire flow of the Create New Offer process as well. I gave the flow more visual progress indicators and heuristically easier input systems.
The data visualization stimuli to understand customer needs.
Create New Offer flow re-design.
Research objectives and findings
I created a list of research objectives with my UX research partner and business stakeholders. We want to understand:
how the product would be used in day-to-day.
any information gaps and the best way to display information.
the basic requirements of an offer from the sales teams’ perspective.
any platform gaps from a systemic level.
Through testing with 6 sales managers we found:
Create New Offer flow was very overwhelming, needed a way to be more dynamic and progressive. The name Create New Offer didn’t accurately describe the action a sales manager would take. We changed the name to Request New Offer.
Managers liked the offer details and dashboard pages, but wanted ways to drill/filter into more specific data in a clear way.
The managers wanted to know more information and needed more hand-holding throughout the entire site.
Redesign process
At the beginning of the flow, Sales managers felt they didn’t know what to expect during the request New Offer process. The before you request” modal outlined tasks the managers might needs to do before requesting an offer, giving them more information upfront.
The most common question asked through testing was about the different types of offers. In the header, I added an informational button that took the managers to a drawer the housed the different types of offers and their descriptions.
I created a progress bar at the top with a status tracker, and a tab structure to give the Sales Managers the ability to see what’s happening next.
Stakeholder thoughts
Based on the initial problem statement, the stakeholders believed we hit our target with the first iteration of the platform. There would be many additions and tweaks to be made, but overall the sentiment from my stakeholders was positive and excited.
Ending reflections
I learned that teaching the value of this role upfront is imperative to us all working together cohesively. Moving forward, I will talk to or teach my stakeholders and other team members what value I can offer as a UX designer to align on team expectations, product success metrics, and product requirements.
Bringing researchers into initial product conversations will help them have a better handle on the research needs of the problem. This redesign showed me to keep asking questions and synthesizing what’s needed from a research perspective.