Developed a usability study template that encouraged user testing.
Convinced the team that we are not our users via research and usability tests.
This project was done Dec 2022 - Feb 2023. Shipped!
I was the lead designer, Marcus Stade the FE Engineer, and Jeff Broberg the PM.
What is Styra?
Styra is used primarily for authorization management. They create tools that help companies control who can do what inside their complex tech environments.
The Policy Builder was a new product feature launch, aimed to provide a low-code approach to policy authoring for the occasional policy writer or those with a less technical background. This project was an interesting challenge because the feature was already in development and design decisions were already made. I joined towards the end of the project, and got myself quickly up to speed with the project's current phase.
Why it matters
My main goal for this project was to demonstrate the value of design. Apart from conducting a heuristic audit of the feature to flag potential friction points, I also proposed internally testing the feature to folks within the company. Unfortunately, the product team had difficulty getting internal and external users to test out new features.
After talking to a few colleagues, I came up with a tutorial-like study that guided users through a series of tasks, asking open-ended questions that pointed to friction points flagged earlier.
We received responses from 18 colleagues, which was a huge uptick from the 1-2 responses the product team usually received. It was a successful format that allowed everyone at the company to familiarize themselves with the feature.
Additionally, because of the structured format, we were able to systematically collect insights and analyze it in a quantitative manner.
Customer Success shared the study with their customers. Product wanted to continue using this format for future launches.