A design sprint to improve the enterprise customer experience

AT A GLANCE

SQL Monitor is Redgate’s flagship product. It allows DBAs to monitor their SQL Server database estate so that they can keep business critical systems available. Whilst SQL Monitor was originally designed for small to medium businesses it is increasingly being targeted at enterprise customers.

As the lead product designer for SQL Monitor (leading a team of 3 other product designers) I led a strategic initiative to improve the SQL Monitor experience for enterprise customers and to establish a future design vision for the product.

Identifying opportunities through a design sprint

In order to rapidly identify opportunities to improve the enterprise experience I organised and facilitated a 2-week design sprint. The sprint was run remotely with a selection of engineers and key stakeholders from across the SQL Monitor development teams. You can read about the approach taken in my article 15 tips for running remote design sprints.

2 week design sprint schedule — The design sprint was split over 2 weeks to allow sufficient time to explore existing insights, to build a prototype and to recruit target customers for testing.

Impact vs Effort to improve mapping — Existing insights were reviewed to identify opportunities to improve the enterprise experience. These were prioritised by likely effort vs impact on desired objectives.

How might we ideas on post-it notes — Ideas for key opportunities were generated using ‘How might we?’ statements.

Storyboard sketches — The most promising ideas were taken forward to be explored through simple storyboards and sketches.

Evaluating ideas with customers

In the second week of the design sprint concepts were prototyped and then evaluated with customers through a number of 1-hour remote user testing sessions. I created a storyboard, and some mock-ups for key pages to help communicate concepts, and also planned and facilitated the user testing sessions.

Storyboard showcasing enterprise concepts — I created a storyboard to help communicate and evaluate concepts with customers.

Remote user testing session — I planned and facilitated remote user testing sessions to evaluate the concepts with target customers. Low fidelity mock-ups were used to remind participants that these were early concepts.

Kano model showing kano categories for features — As part of the customer feedback analysis, I used the Kano model to explore and agree key features with the design sprint team.

Defining the desired enterprise experience

The design sprint identified a number of key features that enterprise customers would highly value, along with opportunities to improve their current user experience. However, it was clear that one product was never going to simultaneously meet the needs of enterprise and small to medium businesses.

Working with the product management team I created a design vision for what a future SQL Monitor product, offering free, standard and enterprise tiers would look like. A clickable prototype outlining the SQL Monitor design vision is available to view online (password: portfolio).

SQL Monitor 1-2-3 framework — Working with the product management team I defined what a multi-tier offering for SQL Monitor might look like.

SQL Monitor enterprise mock up — I created a clickable prototype to outline the SQL Monitor design vision and to showcase what a free, standard and enterprise offering could include.

The results

Enhancements to improve the SQL Monitor enterprise experience are now on the product roadmap and have already led to improved enterprise sales. The design vision has provided the SQL Monitor development teams with a tangible long-term vision for the product and a vehicle to start exploring and evaluating future ideas with customers.