MY ROLE
I was asked to step in and lead the Creative and UX team as the project was simultaneously working with stakeholders across both China and Australia. I provided oversight and support for the local team in Shanghai, (UX, VD, BE, PM) as well as becoming the key point of contact for the Australian stakeholders.
Even though the project was already underway when I stepped in, I was also involved with validating project assumptions and re-planning where needed to set the project up for success. My lead and guidance covered the key experience areas and driving to a holistic base experience and the setup of a flexible Design System to allow to scale for APAC.
When this was achieved I transitioned to a more supporting role and transferred ownership of Creative to a colleague in Beijing as this was my last project with SapientRazorfish and I knew I wouldn’t be there to oversee the final implementation of the experience.
When this was achieved I transitioned to a more supporting role and transferred ownership of Creative to a colleague in Beijing as this was my last project with SapientRazorfish and I knew I wouldn’t be there to oversee the final implementation of the experience.
THE CHALLENGE
BRING TWO VERY DIFFERENT COUNTRY ASKS AND EXPECTATIONS TOGETHER TO CREATE A UNIFIED APAC EXPERIENCE
In today’s competitive business landscape, having an effective Customer Portal, as part of a fully integrated customer engagement hub/ecosystem is integral to both understanding customer’s needs but also in delivering against those needs. It acts as a cornerstone of all effective multi-channel engagement strategies, and serves as a virtual one-stop shop for customers to access tailored information and services, while ensuring we understand our customer’s needs. This is what the APAC Portal is set out to enable.
Crafting an APAC Portal with customisations based on country specific legal and product requirements is one thing. It’s an entirely different thing to try and do this in an agile process working simultaneously with both Australian and Chinese stakeholders, while the project team itself is distributed across 5 different countries and 9 different locations. This while also taking an existing company Brand Style guide into consideration. To make this work we ran our very transparent Creative approach and invited all stakeholders. We also combined this with several face-to-face working sessions conducted in Sydney where I facilitated discussions and decisions for each of the key experiences across the portal, and then finished off with a big Brand workshop to get alignment outside of the immediate project team.
We worked fast to complete the high value customer journeys and experiences to showcase to the Brand team
We worked transparently and collaboratively across locations, time zones and roles. Stakeholders, BAs, UX, VD and Technology people from both companies all came together to discuss solutions on the board.
THE APPROACH
THREE EXPERIENCE PRINCIPLES TO UNITE US ALL
To create a holistic experience across the various asks and use-cases within the project, as well as cater for the complex nature of pharmaceutical information we crafted three Experience Principles to guide us.
1. LAYERING OF COMPLEXITY AND CONTENT
To make ”wayfinding” within the Portal easier, and to make sure all content is available for whom is interested, we’re layering content. To make this point easier to grasp we visualised this concept with the help of a newspaper website.
- FIRST LAYER OF CONTENT: Succinct intro across a range of content areas.
- SECOND LAYER OF CONTENT: Detailed information available, if the user is interested in a particular area.
- THIRD LAYER OF CONTENT: Read more / ”tap to reveal” for large volume detail pages, especially on mobile.
2. PERSONALISATION
The portal will also leverage personalisation to serve up relevant information for the healthcare professional.
Content should be personalised based on the healthcare professional's interests as well as role. To visualise this concept, this news site example is only showing environmental articles, but utilising the same layout and information displayed.
3. DASHBOARD
We recommend that the homepage leans towards the concept of a Dashboard to build ease and simplicity to get to the task at hand. To make this point easier to relate to, we visualised this concept with the help of a logged in bank site
Within a logged in bank site, the user comes in with a key task to complete. Our APAC portal will utilise the same concept to provide the healthcare professional with easy access to the information and flows he/she might be looking for.
These experience principles, as well as a clean, modular design with a focus on the needs and behaviours of our healthcare professionals guided the experience and set us up for a very positive Brand workshop and a great foundation for the project moving ahead without me.
During the Brand workshop, we brought together a wider set of Stakeholders and discussed the proposed experience.
THE IMPACT
A DESIGN SYSTEM PROVIDING COUNTRY SPECIFIC EXPERIENCES
As I wasn’t part of this project from end-to-end, I don’t have information about the end experience nor the final outcome. These designs are as the experience stood when I stepped out but highlights the foundation of the Design System that was put in place to drive a holistic and consistent experience for the APAC Portal for all countries and their respective brands.
Design mockups created by Visual Designer
