Transforming NCR's approach to customer-centric design through innovative Journey Management training.
NCR's Service Design team tackled the challenge of siloed Journey Mapping practices by developing a comprehensive Journey Management training program. This initiative aimed to promote outside-in thinking across business units, streamline customer journeys, and improve resource efficiency. The project utilized Learning Experience Design (LXD) principles to create an engaging, user-friendly training platform. Key outcomes include increased cross-departmental collaboration, improved findability of journey maps, and enhanced understanding of Journey Management's value across the organization.
Problem
Journey Management is crucial for mature organizations to design customer-centric experiences. However, NCR struggled with scattered journey maps, limited access, and inconsistent practices across departments. This fragmentation hindered the company's ability to leverage customer insights effectively and design seamless end-to-end journeys. The project aimed to address these issues by creating a centralized, user-friendly training platform that would standardize Journey Management practices and promote cross-functional collaboration.
Solution
The project aimed to transform NCR's Journey Management practices by developing an innovative, LXD-based training program. This approach sought to bridge knowledge gaps and promote cross-departmental collaboration, ultimately enhancing customer experiences.
- Key features: User-friendly interface, logical information architecture, and content tailored to different learning levels.
- Design process: Incorporated UX/UI design principles, focusing on findability, understandability, and utility of content.
Research
User Research
I conducted interviews on 6 NCR employees from various departments: Service Design, UX Research, and Product Manager. I employed semi-structured interview questions to provide the interviewers the liberty to share what they know (or don’t know) about journey mapping and journey management; as well as any reasons that’s holding them back from considering adoption. A recurring pain point was prominent: Many people were not sure what journey management was, what it could do, who it could be used by, and what the benefits would be.
The top insights found through employee interviews were:
No Home-Base Location
Journey maps used by various units live in an unorganized manner amongst a multitude of siloed departmental folders
Existence of Artifacts
Key stakeholders involved in a customer journey may not be aware that a journey map has already been created by another team
No Log of Materials
The lack of departmental log of existing journey maps and other material results in repeated tasks that take up time and valuable resources
No Log of Changes
When different departments are aligned to use an existing journey map, there is no process to log any updates or changes
Folder Access and Restrictions
Departmental collaboration is usually tied with restricted access to the other team’s folders that house CX materials
In the few cases were the user was aware of Journey Management as a concept, there was usually no time to properly apply the concept when working with other units that weren't aware.
This was the step when I identified that this may not be an adoption problem, but rather a learning problem (or lack-thereof).
Learning Experience Design (LXD)
In relation to UI/UX, Learning Experience Design (LXD) is an extension of the experience with a emphasis on the process of creating learning experiences that allow the learning to achieve the desired learning outcome by placing human-center design and their goals at the forefront. LXD is further broken down into experience, design, and learning.
Competitor Analysis
Once LXD was chosen as the most appropriate approach to experiment with, I set out to study the criteria and characteristics other platforms were implementing to train their employees.
At this stage, the organization and context of the material provided was studied and ranked based on various metrics. While the User Interface experience was considered, it was not a key factor taken into account since the approach was identified to be focused on Learning Experience Design (LXD). The metrics were then compared to existing NCR training platforms (these existed in many different places across various platforms). While these platforms did not have any material related to Journey Management Training, they were still studied to understand the current NCR training ecosystem in order to consider their experience in the overall learning path.
Learning Experience Design (LXD) is rooted in a combination of different disciplines in the "learning" domain to create human-centered and goal-oriented learning experiences. It takes the principles used in User Experience Design and combines it with elements of education, training and development, experiential learning, amongst others. It changes the attention from the "user" to the "learner".
Feature Priorities
Due to the limited time of the project, interview feedback, and based on existing material on Journey Management in NCR's various platforms mentioned before, I chose to focus on four main principles of LXD:
Design
Information Architecture
Based on the Learning Experience Design (LXD) principles chosen to focus on, a logical order of presentation was established through the lens of Information Architecture. This approach enables the findability, understandability, and utility of the content being presented. Applying an IA approach to the creation of the curriculum and its order, would allow training lessons to be easier to find (findability) and integrate new information seamlessly into the learners daily routine (understandability).
In order to apply the utility factor, the introductory section was established with the goal to communicate the value it would bring to the learner. Applying Information Architecture to Learning Experience Design provides order by organizing information in a way that matches the learning level of the audience, or it provides the option for learners to create order themselves (since they can skip sections if they are already familiar with it). Ultimately, it was the foundation to provide a better learning experience and service that allows the learner to make better learning choices.
After establishing the Information Architecture / organization of material, I began to identify where I could include the LXD principles identified earlier in the process.
Ideation
Based on the User Research conducted and Information Architecture developed, I prioritized different features based on the pain points, focusing on problem to feature ideation, and to diverge and weigh the pros/cons and reception of each.
Challenges
This was the phase of the project where I, admittedly, lost track trying to solve all problems for the user. In the process of focusing on the feature solutions, I had to remind myself of the aim: to design a comprehensive Journey Management training program utilizing LXD principles.
For this step, I studied my own approach and researched/asked around if any past projects was involved in a "training" approach or platform; and there was! A group of past NCR interns created a training site which I used as backbone for the UI look called NCR Docs, however, I edited and/or added some features that would incorporate the Learning Experience Design (LXD). Below are some of the preview interfaces:
Feedback
A key piece of feedback I received was: While I implemented the LXD approach to the ideations of the training program, I did not address Feature Opportunities identified from the User Research and Information Architecture.
While placing possible “solutions” before targeting the training wasn’t an optimal order of operations, it allowed me to apply the solution in a way that could be most easily understood by trainees. The incorporation of these Opportunities as educational material provided the benefit of designing the training to mirror the actual platform as much as possible.
Takeaways
At the end of my internship at NCR, I presented this new training concept as my Expo project. For the presentation, I created a poster, for which I also applied principles of Learning Experience Design (LXD) for easier/quicker understanding of the need to incorporate LXD into all trainings; starting with the practice of Journey Management Training which has the power to align multiple departments pain points, gain points, opportunities, and solutions.
- Journey Management is a powerful tool for aligning multiple departments' pain points, gain points, opportunities, and solutions.
- Learning Experience Design (LXD) is crucial in creating effective corporate training programs.
- Understanding the complexities of managing design projects in a corporate setting involves coordinating multiple teams and stakeholders.
- Application of Service Design principles throughout the project lifecycle.
- UX Architecture skills, both in interface design and curriculum creation.
- UX/UI Design techniques for engaging diverse learners.
- UX Research methods to inform design decisions.
- Cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management in a corporate environment.
- Iterate on the training platform based on user feedback and adoption rates.
- Expand the curriculum to cover more advanced Journey Management topics.
- Develop interactive exercises or simulations to reinforce learning.
- Implement a system for tracking and measuring the impact of the training on NCR's Journey Management practices.