Easing user frustrations and increasing adoption for a key product feature
Overview
Dashboards help teams and admins visualize their projects and work through a collection of data and charts.
The product team received signal that customers struggled to use dashboards. Overall adoption was low and support tickets and training around dashboards were repetitive and time consuming for our teams.
I researched, designed, and usability tested a solution that made it easier to get started with dashboards. After launch, we saw higher than expected adoption and a steep reduction in support tickets around dashboards.
Defining the Problem
The process began by gathering insights from dashboard users, internal teams, and our competition.
Based on common pain points and behavior we observed, I created these insights and goals to inform ideation:
- Help users with dashboard creation.
How can we save admins time, especially compared to competitors? - How might we support existing behavior?
Users use dashboards in very similar ways, down to the data and charts used. - How might we help users with filters?
Creating dashboards is difficult because of filters.
Exploration
I explored low-fidelity sketches and tested a prototype with users to see if our solution resonated and how the solution could be improved.
Exploration was focused around dashboard creation and supporting existing behavior, due to constraints of the project. I thought of possible user flows that would help the user with these pain points and created a prototype around a template idea to be tested with users. Below is the “New Dashboard” flow I mocked up into a prototype - depending on the template chosen, a pre-made dashboard is created for the user.
Refining
Minor refinements were made to ensure customization was discoverable and I consolidated the flow into a single step.
Critical feedback was focused on the individual tiles chosen for each template. I refined the design to ensure users knew they could still customize their dashboards, and consolidated the modal flow into a single step.
