Tedious copy-pasting of data between related records and within a record impeded the cognitive work of professionals and contributed to workplace burnout. Suboptimal resource utilization was worth of 1.5 weeks’ work of a full-time employee
My scope
Leading and carrying out problem discovery
Product Design
Solutions
Bulk copying of data between existing records
Creating similar data entries to a record based on its existing entires
Explorations to smoother creation of similar records (i.e. record duplication)
Results
Users loved these solutions and built new expectations towards their app. As iterations of these features improved one record type at a time, users reached out to ask when next iterations would be delivered. Once we introduced these solutions to one record type, users were resistant to working on the record types without them
Details and takeaways
🔥 Details
2
Problem discovery
Planning, carrying out, and analyzing user interviews
Analyzing the impact and reach of a problem
Product Design
Planning, carrying out and analyzing usability testing
UX Design
💡 Takeaways
3
Discovery: ask “why” one more time
Although it’s cliché, just get to the bottom of things
When the user tells you “I want a copy button near the text”, look at their problem. What’s their task at hand? Why is this difficult? How to make it simpler? Maybe there's a way users don't know about somewhere in your product? Why don't they know about it?
Design: interfaces should be familiar & traceable
Remember file copying on Windows ‘95, when there were duplicates and the system gave you this popup window? Your users remember, too. Try to give familiar options (if they fit your use case, are feasible, etc.). They’d think less – that’s what you want
Data coming from bulk operations can have different significance in some contexts, especially if the human touch is the value of your product (or if the data needs manual fine-tuning). Annotate auto-copied entries (e.g. a caption would do) and remember to keep registry of bulk operations. Useful for debugging your system in the future
Analytics: usually success sounds like crickets
Users often won’t tell you they like your feature/solution
At best, they can tell you that other parts of your app are not as good as the one you’ve just changed. Take it as a compliment and reward yourself for a good job 😉