Redesigning TCS.com with Remote Research Chris Farnum | Senior Information Architect | Enlighten

Internet User Experience 2008

April 2, 2008

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About the Client - TCS

IT Services, Business Solutions and Outsourcing HQ – Mumbai, India Part of Tata Group, one of India’s largest industrial

conglomerates and most respected brands TCS has over 108,000 IT consultants in 47 countries TCS Annual Sales: $4.3 billion (2006-2007 fiscal year) Known for quality results – CMMI Maturity Level 5

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Project Goal – Redesign TCS.com

Global Message: Position TCS as a global company and highlight the message of the Global Network Delivery Model™

Brand building: Firmly establish TCS positioning and support the “Experience Certainty” campaign now and into the future

Demand generation: Create an environment to support Demand Generation using the new website

User-centric Design: Design and Develop site based on key user needs and tasks (i.e., ‘outside in’ vs. ‘inside out’)

Technical Infrastructure: Develop the new site on a scaleable Content Management System to facilitate content development & maintenance - Microsoft Sharepoint 2007

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Project Overview

Engagement Plan

Facilitated Work Sessions

Analysis of Key Internal and External Factors

Conduct User Research

Project Requirements

Strategic Assessment Project Requirements

Information Architecture

User Interface Functional Specifications

Technical Specifications

Art Comps

Test Plan / User Acceptance Testing

Launch Specifications

Site Specification

Art Production

Programming

Integration

Quality Assurance

User Acceptance Testing

Staging

Deployment

Final Site

Update

Monitor

Measure

Report

Improve

On-Going Improvements

DEFINE DESIGN BUILD

Feature / Scope Definition

Technical & Implementation

Recommendations

Preliminary UI

Art Comps

Strategy Requirements Design Build Maintenance

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Research Step One – Stakeholder Interviews

Enlighten and TCS staff conducted 28 group interview sessions on site in Chennai and Mumbai and by conference call with:Practice LeadsDelivery HeadsBusiness Unit ManagersSales LeadersHuman Resource LeadersGlobal RepresentativesExecutive Leadership

Estimate: 60-70 participants

Photo courtesy of Scott Mills

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TCS.com Site March 2007 – Home

Long, crowded, and overwhelmingHigh abandonment rate

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Original Site’s Organization & Navigation

Left navigation

Overlapping choices

Options not grouped by type – apples and oranges

Prioritization of choices could be improved

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Original Site – Services Channel Landing Page

Calls to action need to be improved

Channel navigation has no on-states

Content could use more structure and editing

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Interim Site – Launched Spring 2007

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Interim Site Channel Content

Channel navigation within a closed page element.

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User Research Part One - Overview

Research goals – to gain a better understanding of… Buying cycle and research process Site content and features Brand attributes and positioning How users see the relationships and grouping between different types of content19 Participants Customers representing North America, Ibero-America and UK (15) Analysts (2) Career Seekers (2)User Segments Customer: C-Level Customer: Business Unit Manager Industry Influencers Career Seeker (Mid-career)

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User Research Part One - Methods

Remote user research allowed us to connect with users in their own offices while we remained in ours.

Sessions consisted of: Interview questions

Likert Scale questions (scale of 1-10) to measure the importance of site features and content

Discussion questions about buying cycle and brand perception

Online card sorting observed in real time to inform organization of content Remote user testing tool: UserVue

http://www.techsmith.com/uservue.asp Online card sorting tool: WebSort

http://websort.net/ Analysis with EZ-Calc

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Remote Research with UserVue

Moderator(Enlighten, Ann Arbor)

Participant(US, S. America,

Europe…)

TCS Observer(Chicago)

TCS Observer(Mumbai)

Desktop sharing via UserVue

Voice via conference call line

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UserVue Kung Fu

Normally UserVue places a call directly to the participant – domestic calls ONLY.

For international calling, have UserVue dial an international conference call bridge line.

Send detailed instructions to particpants with invitations for accessing the prototype and the conference call.

Watch out for spam filters! Be flexible in case of poor connections. Leave plenty of time between

sessions if you want to capture video. Practice!

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Card Sorting Online with WebSort

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User Research Part One - Findings

Top 5 Features Ranked by Average “Importance” Score (1 – 10) Case studies (7.8) International locations/language (6.9) White papers (6.4) Articles about Innovation/R&D (6.4) Press Releases (6.3)

Recommendation: Provide easy access to these basic types of content and make certain that they are well structured and well written. Also, take care to NOT overplay the marketing message.

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User Research Part One – Findings cont.

Key Observations: Overall, users were comfortable sorting content into groupings by Industries and

Services/Solutions. Products, enterprise software, development environments formed reasonably

cohesive groupings but were more difficult to place within the whole organization. Case studies were easily recognizable and often grouped together on the basis of

document type. Certain individual topics like eLearning and enterprise software were more problematic.

Recommendations: Create a site structure and navigation system that equally supports users who wish to

browse either by horizontal services or vertical industries. Provide alternate ways to find content by type (case study, white paper, etc.) TCS Products are relevant both within their industry contexts and also aggregated as a

type of offering. Create special categories as needed to accommodate topics like Enterprise Software

(e.g. SAP).

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User Research Part One – Card Sort Diagram

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User Research Part One - Outcomes

Key Outcomes Strategic recommendations and

prioritized feature set Report to client stakeholder

governance board Personas for high-priority user

segments CIO Business Unit Manager Career Seeker Industry Analyst

High level information architecture recommendations

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Proposed High Level Information Architecture

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User Research Part Two - Overview

Goal - get feedback on initial idea for key pages and features:HomeSolutions/Offerings landing pageServices description detail pageAbout, Contact TCSTCS Worldwide.

Participants - 9 participants (volunteers from part one)6 customers1 analyst1 career seeker1 TCS stakeholder

After five interviews, we updated the prototype to incorporate the feedback we had received so far.

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User Research Part Two – Prototyping Methods

Remote user testing with a clickable prototype IA + Design collaboration = Medium Fidelity Prototype created with Visio + SWIPR http://www.swipr.com/ Task based user testing sessions Measure feedback via Likert Scale Questions

Ease of Use: 1-10 Usefulness: 1-10

Clients and internal team members observe live remotely and watch video captured from sessions

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Prototype Version A - Home

Industries not expected here

Useful feature but not noticed

Too much duplication

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Prototype Version B - Home

Industries and Offerings split, “Solutions” gone

New layout with Flash promo area better shown, No main navigation bar on Home

Content filter tool now more prominent

Thought Leadership instead of Best Practices

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More Prototype Pages – Channel Landing

Global Navigation bar

Interactive channel landing pages

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More Prototype Pages – Topic Node

Channel navigation

Calls to action

Channel content

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More Prototype Pages – Interactive Map

Details available via user user interaction

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User Research Part Two - Outcomes

Overall Acceptance of the prototype was good. Scores improved from version A to version B Overall combined average score was approx 7 out of 10 Some concerns about usefulness of article content

Revised site architecture – Solutions Offerings and Solutions Adjusted labels – e.g. Best Practices Thought Leadership Repositioned tool for finding Case Studies and other resources Adjusted site navigation and approach to main channels on Home Worldwide map concept proved very popular Contact Us scores improved dramatically in version B

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Revised High Level Information Architecture

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Next Step - Designing the Solution

Next steps: Revised wireframes and created a Functional Specification Content types and descriptive metadata attributes 9 Core Page Types for the content management system

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Designing the Solution – Functional Requirements

Global Page Components Wireframes & Page Requirements

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Designing the Solution – Moving from Design to Build

Design Comps Production Art Site Inventory Site Copy and Content Creation of HTML page templates Content Management System implementation Flash development QA Testing UAT Hosting…

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The Big Moment Arrives!

TCS.COM Relaunch – February 2008

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TCS.com Relaunch - Home

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TCS.com Relaunch – Channel Landing

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TCS.com Relaunch – Topic Node

Screenshot – with callouts?

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TCS.com Relaunch – Content Article

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TCS.com Relaunch – Worldwide Locations

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TCS.com Relaunch – Worldwide: Google Map

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TCS.com Relaunch – Contact Us

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Web Analytics & Measurement

Our scorecard so far…

Home page abandonment rate is down Offerings is the most popular channel Industries Channel funnels traffic to Offerings About isn’t often the first section visited, but gets the second highest

amount of traffic Worldwide pages – 8% of site traffic Thought Leadership gets the fewest visits of any of the main sections, but

includes all main visitor groups: investors, careers, client content. Often followed by white papers and case studies in the same visit Visits occurs late in sessions, not right away

Before After

Ave Pages Per Visit 3.43 pages 4.5 pages

Visit Length 2:35 mins 3 mins

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Web Analytics – Home Page “Heat Map”

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Final Thoughts

Prioritizing features within a large distributed organization is challenging - user research helps in making tough decisions

Try remote user testing: When local users are hard to recruit

and schedule When user segmentation requires

geographic diversity, but you are on a tight schedule

Prototyping is a great way to make your mistakes earlier and get your internal team and the client engaged

Go to India if you get the chance!Photo courtesy of Scott Mills

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In Closing

Questions and Comments?

Download:

This presentation is available online via Slideshare:http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisFarnum

Contact:

Chris Farnum, Senior Information Architectcfarnum@enlighten.com

EnlightenInteractive Marketing | Web Development | Strategic Consulting

Ann Arbor, Michigan | www.enlighten.com