Multi Quoting System
Project
A common problem in the industry is the ability to gather quotes for multiple addresses in any sort of bulk fashion. This is something large businesses require when dealing with connectivity to a large amount of properties. This process is conventionally done manually by an account manager on behalf of the customer, and is a labour intensive job involving running quotes 1 address at a time. We were tasked with creating an industry first solution that could automate this process and allow users to perform this task themselves.
Challenge
Adding bulk capabilities to an already complex quoting process raised a lot of concerns around difficulty for the user. The client also stated that the quantity of bulk quotes could range from 2-500, based on previous customer requirements which meant needing to cater to large range of scenarios. With it also being a first to market solution, there were no examples to take inspiration from and a lot of the technical limitations were not known during the early stages of production.
Single Quote Process
I created a user flow of the existing single quote journey to demonstrate the core steps needed to generate quotes through the portal. By doing this, it helped us understand the minimum requirements for quote creation as well as what pieces of the journey we could move and alter to cater to bulk actions.
Multi Quote Journey
Our first step in understanding how multi quote would work, was to create a flow of the basic steps needed to go from start to finish. We then added notes around each step, highlighting features/actions that the user might need to simplify/complete the journey.
Following the structure from above, we began mapping out an early flow of the multi quote journey. This early flow was used in a workshop with the wider team and stakeholders to gather feedback and discuss any user requirements that might have been overlooked in the brief.
Sketching & Wireframes
We carried out multiple rounds of sketches of key screens until landing on a approach that we took through to digital wireframes. The digital wireframes needed to be quite high fidelity because we were going to conduct some early usability testing with users to iron out any friction points and gather feedback.
Usability Testing & Feedback
We carried out usability testing/feedback sessions with 10 companies, featuring multiple users from each. The companies/people we chose were a mix of large multi-department companies with dedicated teams for quoting, to small local businesses made up of a few sales people. All of these users had requirements for the system we were building in different capacities and gave us a broad spectrum of use cases to gather feedback on.We used these sessions to talk the users through the wireframes, explaining in detail any functionality and interactivity we had planned.
Affinity Mapping Workshop
We carried out an affinity mapping workshop, grouping and categorising all of the information we gathered from the usability/feedback sessions. This activity allowed us to identify common themes between users like friction points, feature requirements, common habits as well as positive affirmation.From this sessions we created a list of actionable changes, ideas for future iterations and areas to retest.
High-fidelity Designs
High-fidelity designs were created and went through multiple rounds of amends from both internal and client feedback. At this stage, detailed discussions with devs were carried out to allow them to identify any technical limitation or areas which they might consider “out of scope”.
Summary
recordings. We are also still receiving feedback directly from the user through various channels for future functionality and improvements.Our next steps for iteration will adopt a more lean UX approach, involving more unmoderated testing and validation of work before moving into development.