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De-risking Decision Making Through Research
Exploratory Research:
Using my past perspective as a teacher to evaluate learning management systems for a growing company
Customer-Centric Research:
Uncovering Needs to Elevate the Customer Experience
Corsa Technic distributes electrical connectors, wiring, and tooling for the automotive and motorsports market. The small 4-person run business had lots of data on their product and sales but little research on their users. The owners wanted to know more about what makes their customers so loyal and how they can improve their experience for these repeat customers.
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Research question 1: Do customers use desktop or mobile more?
Source of information: Business reports, Heuristics Evaluation
Hypothesis: Customers do not use mobile because of the poor usability they experience during checkout.
Research question 2: How accessible is the website design?
Source of information: Page Speed Insights, WAVE
Hypothesis: Removing animations from the landing page will improve accessibility.
Research question 3: What keeps customers coming back for repeat business?
Source of information: (Social media sites, Staff interviews, Journey map)
Hypothesis: Repeat customers view tooltips and popups as disruptions to their process.
Insight: Based on the August 2023 business report, we were not surprised to see that almost 3/4 of the business transactions were completed on a desktop. However, the repeat instances of 0% mobile checkout success rate caused the team to re-evaluate the need for a mobile responsive version of the website.
Insight: Some opportunity areas were discussed like adding testimonials, adding support documentation, and making the Contact Us phone number and email on every page. These opportunities were presented to the owners for gradual rollout.
Insight: The secret sauce for this company is excellent customer service. The company could explore automated customer service options like chatbots, or search assistant AI to take care of some day-to-day work, but the customers like the attention and handholding they get when they call or send an email.
Working within business constraints is always a priority. The research sources were limited to the monthly business reports, the social media pages, and the employee interviews about how the business runs. More privacy-invasive measures like Hotjar, email surveys, or pop-ups on the website for customer satisfaction questionnaires were not considered to align with the business philosophy. I questioned this decision, as I was eager to get more data about the customers, but I fully respect this approach that honors the customer's choice.
The founder of the company was quite proud of the way the company looked and operated its day-to-day business. They had constant business orders and grew their profits each year, so they didn't see the need to know why their customers were so loyal. Now, they are a little bit closer to knowing why their business is successful.
It was an interesting challenge to start work without having the owners on board 100%, but it was a realistic example of proving the value of the research and design project. While their customers are not big proponents of change, the changes did result in better experiences.
Thank you to Corsa Technic LLC for sharing and allowing use of their data for my portfolio.
"The feedback offered has continued to be part of our conversations as we continue to evolve and improve our site - and we believe it has truly allowed us to be more accessible to the customers visiting our site."
“Her write up on our site was thorough and offered both positive and critical feedback. Her broad approach helped us to re-focus on some things that we just never paid attention to. (As a small business, we manage our own site, which often leads to a bit of tunnel vision.).”
View another projectExploratory Research:
Using my past perspective as a teacher to evaluate learning management systems for a growing company
Looking at a variety of free tools to use for learning management
“The project management guild in Tech Fleet wanted to use EdApp and I'd been hanging on that but am flexible on what I'd choose as long as it's future-proof and free for now.” (Morgan D.)
Project Management Guild betters the standards for project management and project risk assessments in Tech Fleet
The Project Management Guild in Tech Fleet was discussing their struggle to choose a learning management system. They were looking for people who had experience using an LMS before and what their experiences were like. I said I used Google Classroom for years and found it very intuitive. We had a few follow-up conversations that included a list of criteria for their LMS and then I started my desk research for competitors.
EdApp has so many ways to engage the students and for the teacher to impart information.
There are quizzes and notifications, multiple-choice, circle the answer, chat, and carousel.
That was all impressive on it's own. However, EdApp had one more trick up it's sleeve.
A feature that combines self-paced training with practical 1:1 assessment.
This was something that no other free LMS was offering.
Thank you to Tech Fleet for sharing and allowing use of their data for my portfolio.
Thanks for your valuable research to de-risk the decision of the project management guild and myself. You helped me out and I really like the idea you proposed!"
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