MicroStrategy Distribution Services
UX Case Study
Long Story Short
It was magical to distribute reports to millions of recipients across the world 20 years ago. That's where
Date
Feb 2019 - Dec 2019
My role
Product designer, UX Researcher
It was magical to distribute reports to millions of recipients across the world 20 years ago. That's where
Feb 2019 - Dec 2019
Product designer, UX Researcher
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study. All information is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of MicroStrategy.
This project started with customers’ complaints about some missing features. The original product functioned reasonably for its time, but it had begun to lose efficacy as our customers’ needs have changed.
“I don’t want to miss out on any new and interesting data in my organization.”
“To schedule distributions to a group of recipients is time consuming.”
“There are hundreds of thousands of existing subscriptions. It’s tough to manage them.”
These requests from our customers who have been with us for decades are quite reasonable. We knew we could make their experience better by simply adding these missing features, but we wanted to offer more.
In the beginning, this project seemed like a closed book to me. To understand how our product can fit into our users' day-to-day workflow, I led the research effort to send out a survey that ended up with more than twenty customer interviews.
Based on information gleaned from the interviews, I created a user journey map, which evolved into a clear vision and a product roadmap.
Derived from the map, we saw potential opportunities to elevate the product in scalability, mobility, and flexibility.
Transform report distribution to information delivery, and a purely administrative job to an experience in which recipients participate.
Integrate Distribution Services into the MicroStrategy data analytics mobile platform, allowing users to consume data anywhere.
To avoid being overwhelmed by information, users need to have a way to manage their interests.
The research helped us align our expectations and understanding with what our customers truly need. According to that, I started to remodel the distribution experience across products.
As users suffer from information overload, the efficiency of information delivery has become critical. In addition to sending reports as attachments, users would benefit from a newsletter displaying a dynamic visualization created from different reports. It allows the recipient to look at the most crucial information that they are interested in.
MicroStrategy Library is a tool for end users to consume data to find valuable insights. Adding the ability to subscribe to interests will help them get useful information on time.
Administrators can create new subscriptions and manage existing ones in Workstation.
End users can edit or unsubscribe from their subscriptions in Library.
The design you just saw is the result of many iterations. Before diving into the details, I did several rounds of usability tests with internal and external users. Some of the users are recruited from Usertesting.com. In addition to that, I got a chance to visit one of them on site. My design proposals were received with much satisfaction, but I was pulled off to work on another project at the point in development where they began to be implemented.
