User Experience Design Portfolio of Anatoly Slobodskoy

Cemantica's Customer Journey Mapping tool combined with a unique customer-centric approach help deliver the best experience to the customers.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and appropriated confidential information. These designs are a reinterpretation of the original. The information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cemantica.

My Role

Customer Insights & Ideation
Entire product design from UX research to conception and visualization. Built the product from zero.
Design Execution & Validation
I designed down on responsive Desktop. I executed journeys, wireframes, prototypes and design specs.

Results
CJM tool has built a solid customer-centric foundation for the company and streamlined the business for further development and success. Nowadays, Cemantica is certified with “Certificate of Excellence” as best practice in customer centric tools, received from Customer Institute.

The Challenge

Help automate the journey mapping creation.

As an international B2B oriented company, operating mainly in Western Europe, Cemantica approached me with one primary objective — to build web-based application that will help automate the journey mapping creation, replacing the existing sticky-notes mechanism that is widely used.

It should propose designs for the different web pages, taking into consideration the Logo theme and colors that are already in place. The designs should be smart & simple, reflecting the values of the company and helping the user navigate simply between the different parts of the tool.

The tool would be accessible from either the website of Cemantica via the login area or from Microsoft Dynamics 365 through a dedicated menu embedded in the Sales & Marketing panes.

I was under extreme pressure to move fast as I was tasked to deliver a high‐fidelity prototype to the technical production within 2 months.

The Discovery

Competitive Analysis

My research applied to products from the field of CJM, with a focus on delivering a smooth customer experience and to gain ground by optimizing the customer journey.

Also, general advantages and disadvantages of online CJM tools and the question of how company's values could be integrated into the context of the final design was an important part of the research. In the process of analysis, I looked (and tried) dozens of tools on the market: Visio, Gliffy, Smaply, XPressia, Touchpointdashboard and so on..

SWOT analysis

The creation of competitive profiles (in terms of marketing strategy, target market, core business, usability, layout, navigation structure, compatibility, content, design and performance) together with SWOT analysis helped to assess current offers in this area.

CJM opportunities and pitfalls

Streamline the customer experience
Teams can pinpoint opportunities to enhance each customer interaction.
Predict consumer behavior
Get a deeper understanding of the customer’s actions to strengthen engagement.
Identify operational inefficiencies
Reducing costs is just as important as earning more revenue. Customer journey mapping helps replace repetitive processes with automation.
Develop a consistent roadmap and experience strategy.
Ultimately, it helps to paint a holistic picture of each interaction, helping mitigate experiences, while fostering positive ones that contribute to greater customer satisfaction and therefore their lifetime value to the brand.

Thinking of CJM as only a strategic exercise
Unless employees are briefed properly about customer journey mapping, there is a danger that they can be viewed as more of a workshop exercise rather than a practical tool.
Mistaking a customer journey map for a touchpoint map
Whereas touchpoint maps detail all the interactions a customer has with an organization, a customer journey map outlines the entire pathway to purchase. This includes all the important steps that may not involve the business at all, otherwise ignored.
Not speaking to customers
While taking on-board the opinions of employees is a good starting point for customer journey mapping, organizations must validate these internal views by speaking with the customers themselves.

Target Audience

Tight deadlines meant that I needed to be efficient conducting user research and collecting feedback. I conducted a range of interviews with stakeholders and co‐workers. These helped to quickly gain insights into the needs of a users and gave me a concrete understanding of the workflows.

The main target audience accessing the tool was users from companies who seek to map the journeys of their customers (mainly from Marketing departments). Their target would be either to replace existing sticky-notes in place or start from scratch and use modern tools to accomplish the journey mapping work.

The Process

Wireframing

Before jumping on details, I needed to validate navigation principles. It allows me to understand how users would work their way through the product. Designing the user flow helped me ensure the experience is smooth enough. Once I got a better understanding of what I wanted to do and the issues I should tackle, I took some time to sketch layouts in Adobe XD.

Home Page

The home page of the CJM tool is the first page that opens after login.

Personas

The Persona screen is the area that allows the user to add, delete and modify personas.

Projects

Contains the customer journey map along with a graphical representation of the emotion level over the journey in different channels.

Settings

This area used by customers to set some parameters on the tool level that will help them personalize the usage.

Prototyping

After some prototyping adjustments and wireframes, mid-fidelity prototypes were created, which I supplemented with clickability using Adobe XD. Again, user tests revealed small vulnerabilities in the structure of the user interface, in some formulations and interactions.

Less Is More
It was popularized by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in describing the minimalist aesthetic. In design, less is more is achieved by using only elements that are necessary to a given design. Using less to achieve an effect that's more than the sum of the design's parts is the goal. Minimalism sounds trendy, and it may very well be a trend. However, the philosophy of minimalism is timeless.

Header of Customer Journey
Stages (Steps) with description title of each stage under the header (presented like a process and allow the user to edit the names and add stages).
When the user creates a new project automatically the system uploads a template with the stages. By default this will be: Awareness, Research, Purchase, Delivery, Support.

Journey description is per channel, so the user will be able to post several journeys on the same stage. An icon with the channel appears on the journey description box
Emotional Level (Feelings) presented in a graphical manner
Conclusions

Avatar with an ability to upload a photo
User Name, Gender, Age
Personality type
(e.g. Artisan, Guardian, Rational, Idealist..)
Generation
(e.g. Matures, Baby boomers, Millennial..)

Background, Behaviours, Needs
Team members
An area that will present who has access to the persona and with what privileges: Owner (this means the user has full privileges), Modify, Read-only

Conclusion

What I Learned

• The main lesson I've learned is to stick to business requirements.. It allowed me to be efficient, transparent and focus on creating the best product possible.

• Considering that this tool is in widespread use and has been on the market for a long time, it was important for me not to copy existing products, but to meet the business requirements and customer expectations.

• The right process and research helped me focus on the main components, which made it possible to finish the project on time, so as not to delay the development.

• Journey Maps are my new best friend. On the one hand it helps analyze a comprehensive process and uncover problematic and promising points, on the other hand to provide a basis for good cooperation for all stakeholders.