Customer Portal

Browser Based Application

Summary

Working within a cross-functional team, I played a significant role in the research, design, and release of Diversigen’s first customer facing application.

Responsibilities

User Research
UI/UX Design
Project Management
Technical Writer
Verification and Validation

Background

Most data companies that offer analytics services will have some sort of report product to give customers. At Diversigen, reports typically make it into a static webpage that is offered to the customer, with links to their data. To stay competitive, the question became how can Diversigen offer up reports in a secure way, while giving their customer an experience that has the potential for added value.

Diversigen’s Customer Portal offers simple functionality with the promise of platform additions that will add value into the future for customers. The Customer Portal itself became the foundation to build upon internally. The portal solidifies a larger software ecosystem creating the opportunity for an end-to-end thread of customer data throughout Diversigen.

Secure access to data.

Secure access to data.

Customer Research and personas

During the initial researching phase, the scope for Customer Portal was fairly broad. We had gotten a lot of great feedback through interviews and surveys. As we continued defining the needs, we narrowed the scope down to an MVP, a thin slice that could be developed rapidly with new features being added in future sprints.

Secure access to data and reports in a pleasing, easy to use, portal platform.

By creating user personas, I was able to help the product and engineering team understand where the customer was coming from so we could meet them where they are at. Personas are also great for filling gaps in knowledge and even uncovering hidden asks that didn’t come up on the first pass.

Working With the Right People

Customer facing applications are extremely rewarding, but it definitely takes a village to ensure that certain considerations are taken before releasing. A cross-functional team was created to tackle the various aspects of Customer Portal.

The product management team acted as product owners prioritizing new features while the developers planned the work to be done each sprint. Stakeholders were subject matter experts within project coordinating and marketing, as well as compliance and security. This group of stakeholders ensured that all business needs could be accounted for when considering additions to the customer facing portal.

  • This team outlined the business needs and created the charter for the product release. As the UX designer, I worked closely with this team to bring the users needs front and center so that requirements could be weighed properly.

  • Being the first customer facing application released at Diversigen, the legal team needed to ensure access and language around the Customer Portal matched up with current contractual obligations.

  • The marketing team ensured the language used throughout the Customer Portal, and within customer-facing training documentation, aligned with current business offerings. I acted as technical writer, creating the documentation needed by the marketing team.

  • The team comprised of Quality Assurance and I.T., ensured that customer data can be accessed in a way that aligns with regulatory requirements, while also meeting industry standard security initiatives within Diversigen. Before releasing, myself and the software team wrote extensive verification and validation plans outlining compliance & security considerations.

  • This team played the crucial role of “technical support” for the Customer Portal. By following operating procedures and work instructions written by myself, this team ensured that customers had a helpful hand in sticky situations.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Product Release — 07.10.2023

Following extensive testing and full approval of verification and validation documentation by the cross-functional team, the MVP for Customer Portal was released to customers of Diversigen in July of 2023. Users could now navigate to the Diversigen website and access their own personalized portal and retrieve their end-product reports on their own time.

Customer Portal not only impacted the user experience of Diversigen’s customers, but also impacted Diversigen internal users as well. The release ushered in several smaller projects around admin functionality, complex integration, and data management, creating an opportunity to enhance the company’s business overall.