Role: Interaction designer
Timeline: from 2016 to 2018
A business transformation journey through design
Spark New Zealand
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Spark, a New Zealand leading telecommunications company, was going through an exciting change by implementing a dedicated customer experience and user experience (CX/UX) team to focus on making better experiences for their customers. The challenge was to use the customer journey to transform the business model from one that focuses on products and services to one that focuses on great customer experiences.
I joined at the very beginning of this transformation journey. We were barely ten in the team a this stage, representing different aspects of design (research, CX, interaction design, visual design).
Our initial goal as a team was to prove the value of design to the wider business. As we produced more and successful outcomes, we grew to feed the increasing demand of resources for new projects. We grew quite fast and reached a team of almost 30 people. That allowed us to have experts in each and every discipline that are covered in the design thinking process (facilitation, research CX, UX, visual, writing, testing).
Ultimately, as a UX designer, my role was to produce high quality CX/UX by collaborating with every other design experts in their discipline (facilitation, CX, visual, writing, testing), and with business owners. Having all those disciplines represented in the team helped creating standards that you can share and embed across the business.
I also helped, with the rest of the team, to shape the overall journey that led to the CX framework adopted across the whole business.
We built a CX framework and toolkits to provide better collaboration tools and processes for designers and the wider business. It focused on design thinking methodology with the following workflow: understand the customer needs and opportunities (we used a design canvas), collaboration and co-creation, testing, refining, and detail design. It was a success and was adopted by majority of the business.
I learned so much about every other design specialists. It really is beneficial for a designer to be working closely with other experts in other domains. It allows to widen your vision on the problem you are trying to solve, provides great insights and encourage healthy debates. All of which improves the outcome delivered.
We also successfully created a space and culture that fostered healthy debates, collaboration and improved the quality of the work delivered.
Challenge
Outcomes
Learnings