Our team had a problem that a single prototype/demo could not address: Illustrating customer pain points across multiple touch points (mobile and web) and showing the experience of our ultimate vision for delighting our customers. Instead of a conference room demo, we decided to tear down our “war room” and built a realistic store environment-- complete with a store name, logo, a working cash drawer and a receipt printer. We brought stakeholders and customers through the experience one at a time to test our vision, combining role-playing and storytelling to act out scenarios. We were then able to show how the experience would look using our proposed solution, which brought the whole story to life in front of the audience’s eyes. By creating this immersive experience we successfully established an emotional connection between our users and team, gained leadership support and influenced teams across Intuit. Outcomes included: Leadership support. We ultimately took 100+ people (including the CEO and 15 other executive leaders) through the experience. Leaders were even telling out story. “Eating our own dogfood.” Because we used a realistic set-up and a variety of products - the team experienced issues (like missing steps and error messages) the customer might have and strengthened their empathy for the customer. Customer backed changes to the design Increase in the team’s morale and engagement with the project Influencing other teams and even the usability lab to create realistic small business environments Audience takeaways will include tips on how to: How to how to create an immersive experience that makes personas come to life for the team How to influence the team and stakeholders to participate in the experience Unique ways of testing a multi-device experience How to do all of this with a limited budget and resources

1. UXPA BOSTON 2014
BEYOND PERSONAS:
CREATING AN IMMERSIVE
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Michele Marut and Duncan Wannamaker

2. IMPROVE OUR
CUSTOMERS’ FINANCIAL
LIVES SO PROFOUNDLY…
THEY CAN’T IMAGINE
GOING BACK TO THE OLD
WAY
INTUIT MISSION

3. BACKGROUND
Goal
My role
• Product Manager (PM)
• RDP

4. POINT OF SALE (POS) DEFINED

5. STRATEGY
Mobile? New Opportunity Desktop?

6. The Ask
THE ASK
Must address
_strategy
_customer pain points
CREATE AN INTERACTIVE DEMO FOR THE CEO

7. NO POWERPOINT!

8. GETTING STARTED

9. PERSONA ELEMENTS
Background
_Mix of retail and service
_Has 3 employees
_Been in business for 3 years
Tools Used
_Excel
_Cash register
_Credit card terminal

11. TELL ME, I’LL FORGET
SHOW ME, I’LL REMEMBER
INVOLVE ME, I’LL UNDERSTAND
- Chinese proverb

13. A SCRIPT

15. CREATE THE
CUSTOMER’S SHOES

22. PUTTING REAL
CUSTOMERS IN
THE CUSTOMERS’
SHOES

23. REAL “INVENTORY”

24. “HACKED” USABILITY LAB

25. The reward for this hard work was to watch real small
business owners trying these prototypes during lab
sessions and asking questions like “when can I have it?”
Tim Beschastnov
Sr. Product Development Manager

26. WALK IN THE
CUSTOMERS’ SHOES
(AKA EATING OUR OWN DOGFOOD)

27. TEAM WORK SESSION

28. LIVE DEMOS

29. NO LOGO

30. OMG!

32. HELEN’S HABITAT’S
MOVED TO A BIGGER
AND BETTER
LOCATION

34. STAKEHOLDERS AS CUSTOMERS

35. WHAT WE DID
Created the customers shoes
Put customers in those customer shoes
Put the team in the customer shoes (aka
eat our own dogfood)

36. Stakeholder support
A better product
Increase in morale
Wide range of uses

37. IMPROVED OUR
OUR LIVES SO
PROFOUNDLY…
WE CAN’T IMAGINE GOING
BACK TO THE OLD WAY
OUR EXPERIENCE

38. Stock image $30
Printed on company
plotter - FREE
Bookshelves and desk
in room - FREE
“Donated” or
“borrowed” items FREE
Props $35

39. LEARN MORE
Watch a video of the room and get other details here -
http://awards.designforexperience.com/gallery/2013/prom
oting-empathy-for-users/intuit

40. MICHELE MARUT
MICHELE_MARUT@INTUIT.COM
@MICHELEMARUT
THANK YOU!
DUNCAN WANNAMAKER
DUNCAN_WANNAMAKER@INTUIT.COM
@JDWANNAMAKER