Improving the Enterprise experience

Duration: 1 month

Overview

Redgate Monitor is Redgate’s flagship product. It allows DBAs to monitor their database estate so that they can keep business critical systems available. Whilst Redgate Monitor was originally designed for small to medium businesses it is now being targeted at enterprise customers. I led a strategic initiative to improve the enterprise experience. Taking a co-design approach and utilising a design sprint, user testing and prototyping, the initiative addressed key Enterprise pain points and opportunities. My work resulted in increased user satisfaction and improved time to value for Enterprise users.

Using a design sprint to explore opportunities

In order to rapidly identify opportunities to improve the Enterprise UX 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 Redgate 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 Enterprise users

In the second week of the design sprint concepts were prototyped and then evaluated with Enterprise users through a number of 1-hour remote user testing sessions. I created a storyboard, and some low-fidelity mock-ups for key pages to help communicate concepts. The mock-ups were intentionally low-fidelity to focus on the concept, rather than the visual and UI design. I also planned and facilitated the user testing sessions which were observed by the rest of the team.

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

Remote user testing session — I planned and facilitated remote user testing sessions to evaluate the concepts with Enterprise users. Low fidelity mock-ups were used to emphasise 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 identify valuable features and improvements for Enterprise users.

Delivering ideas via the product roadmap

The design sprint identified a number of key features that enterprise users would highly value, such as an improved estate dashboard and the ability to add tags to make it easier to filter, search and visualise an estate. Working with the product manager, Enterprise UX features were added to the Redgate Monitor roadmap. I worked with engineers to further iterate, define and deliver features, including the navigation improvements to improve the Enterprise UX and improvements to the overall estate dashboard.

SQL Monitor global dashboard design — I worked with engineers to further iterate, define and deliver Enterprise UX features, such as improvements to the overall estate dashboard.

Results

Enhancements to improve the SQL Monitor enterprise UX have had a positive impact on the Enterprise user satisfaction and onboarding rating (measured via a survey a month after an Enterprise user is registered). They have also been key to helping to secure more Enterprise sales by alleviating some of the Enterprise user pain points, and by helping to prioritise and validate Enterprise features on the product roadmap.

Learnings

Key lessons I learnt from this work were:

Remote design sprints can be effective – Despite being conducted remotely, the design sprint was still highly effective and had good engagement from the team.
Discovery ≠ primary user research – Discovery doesn’t have to mean just primary research. During the design sprint, existing insights were utilised which saved time and helped the team to quickly make progress.
Evaluate concepts as early as possible – Evaluating concepts with users in the second week of the sprint helped to identify those that resonated with enterprise customers, minimising wasted effort.
Great design ideas don’t just come from designers – Involving people from different parts of the business in the sprint led to a diverse and innovative range of ideas.