Introduction
Kemai technology launches a vertical socializing application targeting at people in marketing function, who want to manage their own client resources rather than under the monitoring of the organization. The key features include: mobility, IM, notes, calendar, client map, birthday reminder and communication reminder. Within the anonymous socializing platform, ‘kemai circle’, people could exchange client information to improve sales performance.
My primary job includes improving usability of the current app, designing and prototyping for new features. On top of my daily job, I carried out an independent user research focusing on social needs of sales people, to support design decisions on the app's social feature.
Research Process
Motivate first-time use: introduce in big names and up-to-date topics
Guidance: examples or tutorials
Keep users active: focus on creating more connections for users
Through the help of the marketing team, I had the chance to get in touch with a large user group. Participants were from a variety of industries and different positions, but all positions have needs for customer relationship management, which made them our target users. Below is an overview of the constitution of participants:
Industry: finance, IT, software service, manufacturing
Position: marketing , business development, sales, public relationship, operation manager.
During each face-to-face session, my colleagues and I would first ask users to describe what their daily work was like. Through the casual talk, I would be able to understand their tasks and scope of work. Then there were some more specific questions about how many customers they need to manage, and how they obtain information about new customers, and how they interact with other sales people.
After this session, my colleagues and I would observe users going through a series of basic bench-mark tasks, especially how they interacted with fake users in the social circle. Some follow-up questions would be asked to dig deeper into their thoughts of the feature and some special observations.
Two personas were formed based on interviews and observations.
The primary persona, Frank, works with clients in the area of finance and have to maintain a large group of clients on a daily basis. He is good at utilizing different tools to help him work efficiently; He also is very active in socializing with people who are also salesmen. For him, socializing means an outlet for stress, as well as a important source of information and new skills.
In contrast, Sally is less active in her work as well as in social aspects. She wants everything to keep simple.
The interviews and A total of 47 participants, at least 1-month experience on the app.
Problem | Priority | Solution | |
---|---|---|---|
Difficulties in understanding |
Kemai circle is a social network for sales people that enable them to help each other, communicate and share feelings. |
6 |
|
It is a network based on a intersection of clients |
10 |
Using a system avatar to manage the default contents of kemai circle, educating users how to get started |
|
What does “serve” mean |
9 |
Change the way of expression |
|
Difficulties in use |
Anonymity |
7 |
Add tutorial or prompts |
How to start using the kemai circle |
9 |
Let the system avatar post a step-to-step introduction |
|
How to ask questions and tag companies |
10 |
Tutorial page |
Wireframes and prototypes
improvements on Kemai circle
Final Interaction flow
Other wireframes
In addition to the efforts spent on Kemai circle, I was also responsible for making wireframes for other new features to communicate design ideas with the development team. Together with the team, we finished 3 major product updates in 2 months.