The parent firm, which I own, Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC (DBA WARP3Insights), was engaged by the Small Business Banking Group at SunTrust to study how to fix what they saw as problems with the S1's Small Business Banking product as it existed at the time. Brad Wiederhold, Dr. Jesse Zolna (now with Sachs Research in NYC) and Dr. Don Rickert conducted a multifaceted study involving small business owners in order to discover actionable insights into how the product should be modified to meet SunTrust's (and its customers') needs. The goals of the engagement can be summarized as:
- Determine which aspects of the new release of Business Banking (from S1) were useful, usable and desirable (i.e. had value and appeal)
- Document aspects of the system that fell short on these essential criteria
- Provide actionable insights to drive design customization or even re-design of the product by the vendor (note: this was the actual result, as unbelievable as it may seem!)
•
The main facets of the study were:
- Discovery ('Ethnography Lite')
- Participants were small business owners recruited from among early adopters of the product
- Paid $100 for from half to a whole day (note: the participants worked during our presence...that was the idea.)
- Few participants allowed electronic recording of any kind (typical when money is involved)
- One WARP3 Insights Researcher conducted depth interviews when potential insights appeared likely
- One WARP3 Insights Researcher took careful notes
- Particularly important given the lack of video or audio recordings
- One SunTrust Staff Member observed
- Distillation of Observations
- A painstaking process involving ideation among the researchers and the client (SunTrust) and represented as mind maps (big scenario diagrams) for each participant, which included context, issues, problems, etc.
A consolidation of themes applying all participants into a single mind map (a kind of meta-scenario--a REALLY big scenario diagram)
- Persona and Scenario Creation
- These begin to emerge during the observation distillation process.
- WARP3 Insights created Persona descriptions of each type small business owner identified during the observation phase and typical scenarios having to do with online banking usage
- Usability Review
- Detailed review involving 23 areas of usability using proprietary checklists of several hundred items
- Graphical Prototyping of Suggested Improvements, covering usefulness, usability and appeal issues
- A Lengthy 'Highlights' Video
- Contained re-enactments by the researchers of observed issues
- Re-enactments were necessary due to the absence of participant video
- Report in the form of a PowerPoint Presentation
- About 100 issues and potential solutions were identified.
Result: Apparently, most of the recommendations were ultimately implemented based on the state of the current version of Small Business Banking.
- Problem: The client shared materials with the Small Business Banking vendor (S1), which they were NOT supposed to share, resulting an uncomfortable future relationship between WARP3Insights and S1 (but S1 did make the necessary changes in the product!)
- This is mentioned a lesson to others. The lesson is to be careful what you give to a client.
- Assume that anything you give to the client will be used in whatever manner the client chooses, regardless of prior agreements.