Invoca is an AI-powered conversation intelligence platform enables revenue teams to deliver seamless buying experiences that drive revenue growth by using the best of digital and human touch. I was on the Dashboard and Reporting Teams responsible for the data visualizations product areas. Technicalities aside, I helped create bomb dashboards for marketers that helped them achieve their goals. The dashboards could show how well a campaign was doing, where revenue was coming from, and overall performance and health of marketing strategies. This project focused on adding a framework for a robust filtering system. Marketers, Marketing Analyst, and anyone else using the Invoca platform needed to be able to visualize how marketing was doing at their company. These new features helped users achieve that and more.
TLDR: This project was adding features to the header on the Dashboard and Reporting areas of the Invoca platform. Some features were apread across the platform while others were brand new. With the help from data collecting tools such as Pendo/Fullstory and user testing, we were able to make design decisions based on the data given. Before the updates, users were only able to view data points for a set date range (Last 7 Days, Last Month, Last Quarter" which was hardly the bare minimum required to accomplish their goals. We've given users more filters to be able to manipulate the data set they need to see in order to make better decisions or see how well campaigns are running. We also added some quality of life improvements to reduce confusion or help them achieve their goals quicker.
Still being new to the company, I needed to learn the ins and outs of the product. I took time to dive into the Dashboard and Reporting areas. Then I realized I had no idea what anyone was talking about and needed to learn the marketing terminology users were familiar with and that in the platform.
Closely working with UX and the PM, I was able to gather the information about what the project was and the future roadmap, how users interact with the platform, what goals they have, and pain points to address.
Having access to Pendo and Fullstory, I was able to find where users were spending most of their time, what they were looking for, and how often they were clicking certain actions on the Dashboard.
Fullstory was able to to give a heat map on where users were clicking, real-time video of people using the software, page funnels, and showed data on which items were being most used.
Pendo gave further insights about the page. It showed how much users were clicking items on the page. This influenced new design decisions that were previously hidden behind drop downs thus giving the user quicker access to most used actions.
The Invoca platform was a bit patch-worked since the parts of the product were divided amongst different teams. To keep things consistent and give users more options, we decided to include some features from other pages. The Dashboard and Reports area are the centralized places where majority of users spend most of their time. Seeing the data at a snapshot in an easily digestible form is what people need, but they also needed to be able to manipulate the data points to find specific answers to guide strategy and decisions.
While working closely with the Product Manager, we established the features that would be needed in the new designs.
Existing somewhere on the platform:
New:
Up until now, users were only able to manipulate the data based on a set date range.
Users like Marketing Analysts or Executives, and Digital Managers need to be able to manipulate the data based on a variety of factors. They need to be able to see the date or the success of a marketing campaign to determine how successful the outcomes of the campaigns are.
- Did Q4 outperform Q3?
- How has the last 90 days been? How have the last 34 days been since we started a new campaign?
- What factor drove revenue from this specific campaign over the last quarter?
When a user creates a tile, they have the option to set the date range on it OR leave it as default at the mercy of the dashboard date. Filters typically sort through data to show what is relevant to the searched criteria. In this date range case, that was not the case. If a user changed the date on the dashboard filter, it would only change the tiles that had NOT been previously set by a user - leaving the ones that had a set date stuck in the timeframe set by the user. The internal team thought this caused confusion.
With a little help from UserBrain, we were able to set up a remote usability test to determine if a feature deemed confusing by engineers, UX, and product was worth breaking and fixing. I did some quick usability tests to determine if the Date Filter was clear and how people felt about the builder tiles NOT changing when the date filter is changed.
Users initially expected each tile to change with the date filter, however they were able to quickly figure out that some constant was keeping the builder tile static. Most testers noticed the “Last 30 Days” badge and realized the data in the tile was for the last 30 days and not for whatever the date filter was showing for the rest of the tiles. If people who have never seen or used this were able to figure it out, I believe our actual users should be able to as well.
Adding a tool tip over the badge might help add some extra clarity :-)
Comparing the old and the new header designs, you may notice there is a date drop down and action drop down...and that's it. The new designs have both of those pieces and more!
All the features that were determined in the early stages of the project made it to the dashboard as well as a few others:
This was my first time using realtime tracking software and remote usability tests in a professional setting and I LOVED IT. I was a bit nervous sending off the test into the open world. I was nervous to hear what others thought or how badly they would fail -- but that's kind of the point, right? We want people do poke holes in our designs so we can come back with something better. After watching the results, I was hooked. I loved seeing others thought processes and watching how they overcame challenges.
Overall, this project was pretty straightforward without too many hiccups. The feature add was clear with lots of opportunity to explore and discover what users really need to accomplish their goal. I had flexibility and creative free rein to be able to decide how to go about the project. There were some setbacks with reorganization, the lead engineer for this project leaving the company, and the Product Manager leaving for paternity leave -- but that only allowed more time to explore and try different solutions.
In the future, filtering in the dashboard and reports will be much more robust. This project was mainly adding some features as a framework where more will be able to be added in the future. There will be tons of other filters so users can narrow down the data they are looking for.
