Putting the Customer Back in the Center of SOA with Service Design and User-Centered Design

Institute of Information Systems

@hevs.ch

Techno-Pôle 3 – CH-3960 Sierre

Putting the Customer Back in the Center of SOA

with Service Design and User-Centered Design

Arnita Saini, Benjamin Nanchen and Florian Evequoz

Benjamin Nanchen

benjamin.nanchen

Plan

• Context of work

• The project INFOPLACE

1. Data gathering through Ethnomethodology

2. Data Interpretation

3. Designing from Insights

4. Prototype Implementation and Usability Evaluation

• Discussion and conclusions

2

Context of work

An applied research project

• One company – One problem

– Krios: A ten-year old Swiss company active in the Cloud Computing

– The products portfolio and its organization

• Each particular product is organized as an independent silo

• A solution – INFOPLACE

– Adoption of a SOA framework to tackle the backend complexity

– Design of a web application (INFOPLACE) to reduce the frontend

complexity

• Our contribution

– Design of the INFOPLACE and its link to the SOA

• Development of a web customer service (ex. sales system)

4

• Team

– Prof. Florian Evéquoz: Project leader

– Arnita Saini: User-centered design

– François Morard: Software engineer

– Benjamin Nanchen: Service design

• Methodology

Compe torAnalysis

Customerinterviews

Immersionincompany

AffinityDiagrams

ServiceBlueprint

Wireframing

Informa onArchitecture

PrototypeUsabilityEvalua on

DATAGATHERING

DATAINTERPRETATION

DESIGNFROMINSIGHTS

PROTOTYPEANDEVALUATION

An applied research project

5

How to align user’s need with SOA?

• Initial goals

– Engineering an SOA and a web customer’s service

• Lack of the SOA

– Approaches for engineering an SOA do not typically include customers

• The concept of service

– Business service exposed to customers OR small software component

• An interdisciplinary methodology

– Originality of our work

• The mix of user-centered design and service design to explicitly

align the needs of customers with the SOA.

6

The project INFOPLACE

1. Data gathering through Ethnomethodology

Compe torAnalysis

Customerinterviews

Immersionincompany

AffinityDiagrams

ServiceBlueprint

Wireframing

Informa onArchitecture

PrototypeUsabilityEvalua on

DATAGATHERING

DATAINTERPRETATION

DESIGNFROMINSIGHTS

PROTOTYPEANDEVALUATION

Competitors Interface Analysis

• 4 competitors

– Amazon, Office 365, Swisscom, Infomaniak

• Protocol

– Visiting, purchasing and customizing

• Heuristic Evaluation

– Identify the usability strengths and weaknesses

• Results

– List of best practices in the domain

• Customer orientation (ex. sales)

• Usual places for standard actions (ex. logout)

8

Semi-Structured Interviews

• 8 participants

– 5 customers, 1 collaborators, 2 managers

• Topics

– General context of work

– Experience of Krios services

– Quality of services

– General questions

• Results

– Customer’s expectations

• Main requests (ex. purchase of a service)

• Quality of services (ex. helpdesk)

9

Immersion work at Krios

• Visit of Krios during working days

– 3 members of the project team

– Observation and film

• Topics

– Typical everyday work

• Results

– Back office’s constraints

• Support process (phone call or email)

• Lack of traceability

• Administrative work

10

The project INFOPLACE

2. Data Interpretation

Compe torAnalysis

Customerinterviews

Immersionincompany

AffinityDiagrams

ServiceBlueprint

Wireframing

Informa onArchitecture

PrototypeUsabilityEvalua on

DATAGATHERING

DATAINTERPRETATION

DESIGNFROMINSIGHTS

PROTOTYPEANDEVALUATION

Affinity Diagrams

• Goal

– Consolidation of raw data

• Technique

– Write each finding on a post-it

– Organize it in different categories during team session

Raw data Consolidation

12

Main outcomes

• Simplicity in design

– Implementation of wizards

• Assist customer in purchasing and consuming services

• Key functionalities for INFOPLACE

– Service purchase

– Account creation or removal

– Modify user data

– Permission change

• Clarification of Krios’s business

– Hosting

– Software as a Service

– Customer service (help desk)

13

The project INFOPLACE

3. Designing from Insights

Compe torAnalysis

Customerinterviews

Immersionincompany

AffinityDiagrams

ServiceBlueprint

Wireframing

Informa onArchitecture

PrototypeUsabilityEvalua on

DATAGATHERING

DATAINTERPRETATION

DESIGNFROMINSIGHTS

PROTOTYPEANDEVALUATION

Service Blueprint

• Goal (from the customer’s point of view)

– Capture the entire customer service experience

– Distinguish visible activities (onstage) from support activities (backstage)

• Five steps

– Customer actions

– Onstage/Visible Contact Employee Actions

– Backstage/Invisible Contact Employee Actions

– Support Processes

• Indicate the role of the underlying IT system

• A direct link between the needs of the customer and the SOA

– Physical Evidence

• The customer evaluates the quality of service

15

Service Blueprint

16

Wireframing

• Goal

– Drawing the application without programming

• Use of service blueprint’s results

– Physical evidences, Customer actions and On-stage features

• Creation of wizards

– Customer’s needs

17

Information Architecture

• Goal

– Organization of the content

• Use of service blueprint’s results

– Customer’s actions

• Task

– Support process

• Function

– Physical evidences

• Navigational path

• Navigational path for purchase

– Home screen > Purchase option > Wizard > Home screen

18

The project INFOPLACE 4. Prototype Implementation and Usability Evaluation

Compe torAnalysis

Customerinterviews

Immersionincompany

AffinityDiagrams

ServiceBlueprint

Wireframing

Informa onArchitecture

PrototypeUsabilityEvalua on

DATAGATHERING

DATAINTERPRETATION

DESIGNFROMINSIGHTS

PROTOTYPEANDEVALUATION

Prototype Implementation

• Visual design of INFOPLACE

– Based on wireframe

– Combination with the layout of Krios website in order to retain

consistency

20

Usability Evaluation

• Methodology

– Five usability experts

– Use of Nielsen’s heuristics

• Results

– Most severe problems

• Place of standards functionalities (ex. logout)

• Enlargement of the resolution

• Suppression of gridview

• Differentiation of services to buy and services to manage

• Conclusion

– Correction of the most severe problems prior to release of INFOPLACE

21

Next steps

• Krios

– Implementation of the solution

– Connected INFOPLACE with their SOA

• HES-SO Valais-Wallis

– Follow up study

• Iterative design process

22

Discussion and Conclusions

Taking the best of each methodology

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

– Facilitation of scalability, availability and performance of service

• User Centered Design (UCD)

– Help to be aware of the desires and needs of users

• Ethnomethodology

– Organization of the content and prototype

• Wireframing, Information Architecture

• Service Design – Customer-oriented focus

• Ethnomethodology

– Understanding customer-oriented processes and links to the underlying systems

• Service blueprint

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An interdisciplinary methodology

• Strengths

– Participation among team members

– Dynamic process of work

– Inputs from the different skills and expertise within the team

Effects on business level

• Clarification of the Krios’s business

– 3 categories of services (hosting, SaaS, help desk)

• Simplifying their products portfolio

– Reducing their products list

– Providing pre-configured packages with appropriate pricing

– Hiding details of parameterization of services 25

Thank you for your attention!