The Experience Index puts WattsOn for Giants to the test

By Elena Ivankina

The team at WattsOn for Giants used the Experience Index to optimize its customer-centric approach, redefine the designer’s role, and better leverage its expertise to increase the product’s performance and user uptake. The Experience Index is a self-evaluation survey developed by ENGIE Digital’s Design Studio to gauge the level of user experience for the ENGIE Group’s digital products and services. Feedback.

Creating value through user experience

Why spend time and money on a digital solution if it does not resolve user issues or generate value?

These types of pitfalls can be avoided with user experience (UX). By building and pressure-testing a digital solution through this lens, you can ensure that it is useful, effective and viable for the company. This scope also includes product and service design. More than anything, the approach is a lever for addressing the business performance of digital projects. The Experience Index is an excellent way to make these objectives top-of-mind.

The Experience Index is a ‘made in ENGIE’ self-evaluation tool

Developed by the Design Studio at ENGIE Digital, the Experience Index is a self-evaluation survey that measures the maturity level of user experience for ENGIE’s digital projects. It also suggests ways to improve product performance.

After answering a list of questions, you are given a score indicating your current stage in the design process. There are four levels of maturity: Emerging, Tactical, Mastered and Vital.

Based on your score, the Experience Index customizes recommendations for you on four key components: user experience, the team, methodology and leadership.

Learn more about the Experience Index here.

Get to know the Design Studio here.

Case study: WattsOn for Giants

1. About WattsOn

WattsOn is the customer-facing digital platform that Global Energy Management (GEM) uses to manage and monitor its end-to-end power supply accounts, from advising, risk management and forecasts to transactions, consumption, and billing.

WattsOn has two main objectives: manage accounts and personalize the user experience.

The team at WattsOn for Giants handles the platform’s key customer accounts. It excels at always being mindful of what customers need, interacting with them to determine their pain points, and providing solutions.

It turned to the Experience Index to be able to prioritize and select the upgrades that would eliminate these pain points.

2. The Experience Index x WattsOn for Giants: working smarter not harder

Around half of the WattsOn for Giants team that took the survey obtained a maturity level of Tactical. It is a pretty typical score for a product from an ecosystem that is not digital-native. In this particular case, UX was not actually a key component of the platform’s decisions and priorities. It is more seen as a function that can be turned on now and then instead of an actual growth driver.

But the WattsOn for Giants team is very close to its users and knows them inside and out. They interface with them all the time and gather feedback through a number of channels like Jira, Confluence and live chats. The product team even holds sessions called Living My Life where they observe users in their environment.

The UX paradox

• For WattsOn for Giants, the vast majority of the team said they track large amounts of qualitative and quantitative data to measure the experience users receive, and that they take customer feedback very seriously.

BUT

• Half the team acknowledged that they go with their gut feeling when it comes to this experience and virtually the same proportion did not know how the feedback was being used.

So how did they get such a relatively low maturity score? And how can they improve it? It is a paradox that usually indicates the team is spending too many resources on priorities for the tech, functional and business aspects, and not enough on the shared product vision.

In this case, it usually turned out that few team members had a full grasp of the experience or the value they give customers. This results in dissociating the indicators from the product, which renders them meaningless.

Then user satisfaction statistics are often used as basic reporting data and vanity metrics that are basically pointless. So, all the work done measuring and leveraging user behavior turned out not to deliver on expectations.

A fresh approach for the WattsOn for Giants team could be to improve how they manage critical stages of the user pathway, associate them with different user types, and share them with the team, who can make it into an actual routine decision-making tool.

3. Making indicators meaningful

It may seem like an ambitious plan, but kickstarting it could only be a matter of a designer investing a few days, and mere hours for the team and the users.

The five-step method:

1. Define (or validate for WattsOn for Giants) the user pathway with the product team
2. Approve and supplement the pathway with a few users
3. Map out the pathway’s most critical stages, which are usually when the product is interacting with other software
4. Determine what you want to measure and why: this is the step where product vision and objectives count the most
5. Choose and configure a tracking tool or figure out your own way of tracking these KPIs.

How can we ensure the process is a success?

Just because the process starts does not mean all the issues are instantly resolved. It is better to begin with a very narrow scope, and then expand it to solve the problems at hand.

Step 1

Choose the user pathway where you control the most elements:

• Available and engaged users and product team
• A pathway where you decide the objectives and issues
• An experienced designer who is part of the process and has in-depth knowledge of your product’s issues and environment so they can help you map the pathway and define the KPIs
• A management team involved in the project that can tell you which business interests to focus on when deciding on relevant indicators
• All the stakeholders who are part of the process and know how it is progressing

Step 2

Centralize the feedback and other user-related data, and contextualize it by referencing the pathway and pre-set KPIs.

Assign someone the role and responsibility of managing that feedback. They will be tasked with sharing, analyzing, and leveraging it backed by the entire team’s expertise.

Bonus tips!

• Loop in the UX Designer at every stage with the project leads.
• Invite the developers to participate in meetings with users or at least share the user feedback with them.
• Make sure all the product team members take turns testing out the process. For example, ask one or two different team members each month to track the pathways or scenarios of some well-defined profiles and give feedback like real users. This will get everyone familiarized with the pathways as well as provide bug reports and feedback.

“UX is a vital aid in generating fast product acceptance and it provides countless opportunities like a competitive edge, customer engagement and loyalty, employee performance and convenience, plus it optimizes organizations and processes. The Experience Index is an excellent way to make these top priorities.”

Elena Ivankina, Lead Design Strategist at ENGIE Digital