Business Challenges

• Product sales by Blue Shirts to now include services; i.e. Best Buy Mobile model
• Varying customer validation by vendor
• Varying sales prcoess by vendor
• Many custom promotions and offers
• Offerings catalog setup was a manual process

IT Challenges

• Each vendor has a unique customer validation criteria and sales flow
• Many backend systems affected causing long load times between calls
• APIs not unique to the application

UX Challenges

• Inconsistent form design and error handling
• Lack of content strategy
• No core set of offers or promos
• Existing services unknown
• Best Buy did not own transaction
• Next steps for customer were not clear

Vendor integration and release model

My roles on this project

Process Outline and Actions

• Knowledge - Interview stakeholders, review business plan, understand service design, understand product model
• Heuristic and Research - Evaluate application, interview Blue Shirts and understand their workflow
• Review and Understand Requirements - Both business and functional
• Competitive Analysis - Understand the current landscape of vendors and how customer’s shop for services
• Understand how the agile team is running; incorporate Lean UX principles
• Learn from the architects the onboarding process of a new vendor
• Roadmap and Benchmarks - Set a vision for ideal experience and ways to reach that through upcoming releases

Collaboration, Documentation and Deliverables

Business Team

• Facilitated co-creation/integration sessions with IT and vendors
• Alignment of KPIs with application user flows
• Provided separation and understanding of business goals from behavioral goals
• Bridged the gap for “IT speak”
• Integrated offline considerations and Blue Shirt workflow
• Improved workflow and backend CMS for merchants

IT Team

• Provided lens into the business and sales process
• Involved developers in having seat at that table to educate business on APIs and relationship of front-end/back-end
• Joint service and API design with architects and vendor architects
• Assisted BAs in writing requirements that did not involve prescriptive solutions
• Mapped API calls, end-to-end user flows and journey map

UX Team

• Heuristic Analysis
• Content Strategy
• Style Guide / Components Library
• Vendor API and Front-end gap analysis
• Vendor business and customer gap analysis
• Training simulator built for Blue Shirts
• Ideal experience vision briefs for Smart Home product cross/up sales

Recommendations

“It's rare to find individuals who are technically savvy and have the communication skills necessary to navigate business politics and procedural ambiguities. Shaymein is just what this project needed and has provided infinite value towards getting to the strategic heart of decisions - not only related to UX, but also for the business as a whole.”

Morgan Zuehlke Sr. Manager of UX, Best Buy

"Shaymein utilized his extensive background in UX strategy to help guide the IT teams to create a better user experience for the Connections Signup Tool. Shaymein is always deeply engaged and constantly provides valuable insight and feedback to help drive a consistent user experience. Shaymein has created a roadmap based on user feedback and his experience that we hope to implement in future projects."

Blaine Ekre IT Systems and Application Director, Best Buy

“Shaymein is a real pleasure to work with and a tremendously effective UX director and thought leader. We worked together on a multimillion dollar virtual retailing and e-commerce initiative and his leadership was critical to the success of the program. From initial requirements evaluation and a drive to innovate at the business process level and build up from there until we have the best user experience, Shaymein covers a lot of ground across the entire product development life cycle. He pushes the design team to not only develop world class human interface solutions but to take ownership of the product and the brand, participating in project and program management sessions as an equal and trusted partner. I sincerely hope I have the opportunity to work with him again.”

Greg Jensen Sr. Systems Architect, Best Buy

"As our UX strategist Shaymein pushes every day, every meeting, every conversion - driving the team and his peers to think differently, pursue all options, and not to compromise or settle for the easy/fast solution. He has the rare ability to cut through the noise, simplify the problem, challenge the status quo, and drive towards (and deliver) the best possible solution."

Corcoran Shannon Merchant Director - Strategic Growth, Best Buy