Macbook Pro

SETTING STRATEGY

Maintaining alignment is often harder than establishing it in the first place.

VIVA ENGAGE

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT SUPPORTING MY REPORT SOPHIE AND GAINING ALIGNMENT FOR A NEW FEATURE ON VIVA ENGAGE

Sophie was hired for a position that was below her potential because she had a strong desire to work at Microsoft. She needed a complex project to earn a promotion. A project to increase interaction within Engage’s newest feature Answers showed promise, but it lacked direction. Despite this, Sophie believed it was her chance to prove herself.

Answers is a new feature on a not-yet-well-known product within the Microsoft ecosystem

Significant data showed that the feature was not naturally discoverable

INCREASE

INCREASE

VISIBILITY

Employees lack easy access to information, resources, and opportunities

Employees spend significant time searching for internal policies, regulatory requirements, and industry standards

INFORMATION

INFORMATION

ASKERS NEED

I was her third manager in the span of 6 months

Leadership did not have visibility into her strengths as a designer

SHINE

SHINE

SOPHIE WANTED TO

Problems

Answers’ User Roles

Asker

A person who is looking for information, or encounters challenges that they need help solving. Prompting them to seek advice

Answerer

An active participant within Viva Engage who provides information or insights to other users posts

Q?

A!

Team using FigJam visuals to build alignment

Overcoming Indecision

At the beginning of the project, the GPM and CVP couldn't agree on first steps, making the team nervous. For three weeks they attended a series of strategy meetings looking for Senior Leadership's decision. To help, I suggested a Project Kickoff workshop to define user needs, align our strategy and get everyone on board with the next steps.

FigJam board of data presented during the alignment workshop

Who was Involved

  • Decision Makers for both Answers & Communities

  • Design Leads for both teams, including Sophie

  • Product Leads for both teams

  • Backend Architect

  • Research

What we Learned

  • Users did not want to lose context established in a community

  • Despite search, the same question gets asked repeatedly

  • An average of 83% of questions are going unseen

Alignment Reached

  • Feature would be integrated into a community

  • We would target Research and Development communities with the most active users.

  • Customers who do not use Viva Engage will be focused on in our next iteration.

Early Explorations

As we know, it's one thing to establish alignment, but maintaining it can be challenging. Sophie learned this firsthand during the ideation phase when our GPM urged her to keep Answers as a standalone product and create an Answers-only Community. In an effort to find balance, she also explored an option where Answers could be shown as a separate section within a community, ensuring that users didn't lose the context of their community.

Answers Only Community focuses on Asking and Answering

Answers as a tab within a Community sill separates Answers from the Community, but also serves the user’s need to maintain context.

Answers only Community

Answers as a tab within a Community

Iterations Tested

Collecting Data

Sophie wasn’t feeling heard when pushing back on Answers Only community. To help her gain influence over the direction, I suggested a running a Comparative Usability Test. Working with our research partners, we crafted an experiment on the effectiveness and efficiency of an Answers Only Community and one with a Mixed Feed. We tested internally via our Dogfood program, and also launched with a select group of power users. 

  1. Content Discoverability: Users posting in multiple communities led to a significant increase in bounce rates in Answers Only Communities, and ended up asking their questions in multiple places.

  2. Questions Answered: 62% more questions were answered in the Mixed Feed experiment.

  3. Community Interaction: Mixed Feed saw a rise in all aspects - posting, responding, and connecting.

  4. User Satisfaction: Users were 32% more satisfied due to ease of use, simplified context sharing, and high community engagement.

Mixed Feed

1

2

3

4

Single Feed

Together, we created an intelligent publisher that leverages AI to minimize repetitive questions by sharing similar ones but uses visual cues in the Communities publisher to maintain discoverability in a mixed feed.

Finalized Approach

Community with Answers Integration

BUSINESS IMPACT

PROMOTED

PROMOTED!

SOPHIE GOT

  • 13.8k in Customer Activity

  • 44k in Dogfood

INCREASE IN
ACTIVE USERS

1636

1636

%

  • 3.3k in Customer Activity

  • 68k in Dogfood

250

250

ANSWERED
POSTS INCREASED

%