DSP Logistics Portal

I approached this issue from multiple directions: 1) Get UX and product onboard and in agreement with the basic user needs and tech gaps; 2) Build excitement and visibility within the organization to solve the customers’ needs; 3) Research DSP cognitive load, business structures, and unmet needs; and 4) Communicate the ‘state of the customer’ and ‘big rock’ through strategic documents.

Step 1: Getting UX and Product onboard

Working with UX leadership, I facilitated a weeklong design sprint to create the vision for a dedicated owner app. The agenda was simple: map the customer’s daily experience and the gaps within their tools; develop a shared knowledge of the issue and facilitate insights to drive design; explore solutions to solve for the issues uncovered; capture early feedback from the customer; and share outcomes in a poster, document and rough prototype. These were presented to Product leadership and team members.

This initial workshop led to a DSP tech offsite where I led customer interviews and a customer panel discussion with the attendees to create a shared understanding within the product management, engineering and design teams. I then facilitated a series of brainstorming sessions that helped each product pillar conceptualize solutions within their space and then across pillars. Product Managers incorporated mobile solutions into their roadmaps, with DSP Payments and Support developing mobile first solutions that year.

Step 2: Raising awareness across the org

With one-off mobile solutions underway within Product, we now needed to develop a cross platform vision that would get funding from leadership. I changed the way I communicated research outcomes—incorporating user pain points, summarizing critical insights, and sharing reports to the general research interest email list — 300+ persons. I also got more involved in engineering and org-wide hack-a-thons to provide customer POV: compiling need statements and use cases as hack-a-thon starter kits; and leading customer interview panels that were broadcast company-wide. These approaches got leadership notice, and resulted in at least three PRFAQs globally and an engineered mobile app concept.

Step 3: Build a customer and science-based argument and database

Throughout the activities above I worked to develop a foundation of research to define the mobile needs of the user and the challenges imposed from cognitive load.

• I executed multiple rounds of research on mobile needs to validate our hypothesis that DSP owners needed a separate app from their staff. This included owner and staff observations, interviews and surveys; tool-specific surveys; co-creation workshops and rough prototypes etc.
• I conducted global interviews to confirm work load and processes were not a result of culture. I also collaborated with data scientists to create a service blueprint that defined the full DSP workflow and the products and services associated to each task. I mined my research on DSP staffing processes to quantify tasks, persons, and time involved. The data scientists went on to define cognitive load for the organization, getting leadership buy-in on a metric to apply. I built a set of surveys to build the data set and support leadership reporting. I also collaborated with business on impact worksheets for PMs, an addition to the change management process in product lifecycle management.

Step 4: Build awareness of the Customer’s current state

A common challenge I faced was institutional memory bias—people relied on old paradigms as their reason for building the product a specific way. For example, the DSP program was built in 2017 as an owner-operator model, designed to have one person, ideally the owner, sitting at the desk tracking their drivers until they finished their deliveries. None of that is possible with the volume of drivers and packages on the road, the age of the vehicles, the structure of the stations, and the new delivery model paradigms. To combat institutional memory bias, I wrote several documents including annual State of the DSP, and Big Rocks. I also built journey maps and personas; and worked with UX to develop ‘durable customer outcomes’ (jobs to be done) frameworks. Using these assets, I developed presentations and living experiences for Product and Program to understand and incorporate into their work.