Product Experience Manager
The Product Experience Manager is about client confidence and delivering absolute quality and does not merely enforce a schedule or accept current capabilities but is about the lifecycle of the product, and in fact the lifecycle of the client/stakeholder relationship and must be familiar with technology platforms, delivery frameworks, usability studies and documentation to deliver on each project milestone.
Importantly this role bridges the Business to the Technology and UX/UI teams to align their deliverables, expectations and ongoing BAU support for the live product.
It was at HOYTS as Online Manager in the eCommerce team though that the challenge of turning an essentially BAU focus into a more Agile project focused stream that saw the most reward.
See the steps I like to take for an end to end product.
The focusing question
What is it you are trying to build, what position in market?(Innovation) Or is it a new market?(Invention)
As ‘vendor, brand, ethos’ we wish to ‘what it is you’re creating’ for ‘whom’ and to ‘what result’
eg: As a trusted brand of entertainment we want to create a product that allows parents to safely choose content for their children from a premier selection of content delivered with quality to their mobile device.
Who are your customers?
First part of User Centric Design.
Know the customer, do the research to find out.
What ‘problem’ are you trying to solve?
What is the business case and is it worth pursuing?
Benchmarking
Who is doing it best or uniquely? Are they your competitor and are their targets your targets?
Content Strategy
What do you have to support what you are selling? How accessible is it to the business, by the user?
Think about platforms used to deliver here, commercial agreements to respect and production teams to support ongoing BAU tasks.
Blue skies
You owe it to yourself here if time permits. This is your chance to really put it out there. The differentiator, the unassailable (by your competitors) values.
Concepts Workshop
Mood boards, inspiration and grouping of common ‘themes’ to later align to User Stories
Guiding principles
Distilled set of values.
The beacon to look back on, if the project strays – what were you building? Do you need to get back on ‘track’?
Behavioural Personas
Archetypes of real people, remember the research? good. For whom are you creating this for?
What are their goals? What needs will be met by the product?
User Stories
How do the users get to their goals?
Core user journeys
Wireframes and possibly rapid prototypes – paper, code it should be done.
Design concepts
Do you have an overarching brand to adhere to? Use of typography and colour for content hierarchy and grouping of like content.
Production schedule and milestones
User Story based development sprints.
At HOYTS Jira was introduced not only for the Development team but the Design and eCommerce Content team.
Daily standups were part of the worth ethic during the duration of the Online Transformation project and thankfully remains in place now as a good team building exercise.
User Acceptance Testing was extensively deployed across many browser and platforms.
Guerilla Usablity Testing throughout the project was ensured.
A closed loop communication directly with customers on the Desktop site was integrated (via notification and surveys) to test in the real word and iterate.
Why guess when you are being told by your very users right?
