DESIGN FOR CROSS CHANNEL EXPERIENCE
THE ASK
To design and build a world-class customer experience for stc’s digital touch-points, shared by all customers across the Gulf.
OVERVIEW
stc is one of the largest telecom service providers in the Middle East. In 2019 stc refreshed its branded to connect with the masses with the help of Interbrand. stc bought Viva in 2019. With this organizational setup, Viva became stc Kuwait. The stakeholders envisioned a similar experience from a design point of view all the while keeping unique cases in the content management system (CMS). Check out the project at frog.
Role
Senior Interaction Designer
Team
5 designers, 1 Principal Designer
Project Status
Live
Timeline
10 months
Partners
frog, Lohika
Location
Delhi, Bangalore, Milan, Kiev
PROBLEM AREA
Viva was an established telecommunications brand in Kuwait. After a proposed buyout of Viva by stc, it was decided that Viva will be rebranded to stc Kuwait. This meant a massive undertaking of product and service redesign as stc had itself undergone a rebranding exercise.
In order to understand the scope of Viva’s offerings and products we investigated Viva’s information architecture. We discovered that usability of the products and services was challenging and desperately needed help. Interaction design patterns were incongruous, visual elements were dated and information was presented in a non-linear, unexpected manner - almost sporadic.
More over, Viva’s experience felt broken across multiple touchpoints. The experience started from desktop, trickled down to mobile and further moved to kiosks. This meant creating a design language to bind the experience together. This task was made easier thanks to stc’s design system that frog had created as part of stc’s rebranding effort.
MY ROLE
My role was spread across 2 phases of the project:
Part 1
As an Interaction designer I was responsible for taking in stakeholder input, learning from the research in the previously finished for stc Saudi Arabia project and applying it to the Kuwait context. Learning the design system to make sure it was also was implemented as intended - this meant writing content and
Part 2
I led the design phase of the Kiosk touchpoint. After designing task flows, understanding product offerings, limitations and CMS of the stc Kuwait, I directed a team of 4 designers for use cases, interaction design and animations for Kiosk.
Discover
UX ASSESSMENT
A user experience assessment of Viva’s key task flows revealed the fragmented experience to the full extend. Basic heuristics of usability were not followed which caused confusing labels, repetition of information, lack of discoverability and inconsistency in visual elements. These issues needed fixing in order for Viva’s services to be a part of stc as a brand.
COLOCATION IN KUWAIT
To investigate and get to know the context of project management and technology, a team was assembled from frog Milan, Delhi and Bangalore to visit stc in Kuwait. The team interviewed stc stakeholders to deeply understand the cross-functional opportunities, aligning on objectives and expectations for the stc redesign program.
We Worked On:
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Alignment on the Foundation frame work
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Understanding all the features and user stories
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User Stories priority definition
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Documentation of all groomed user stories in Jira
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Define high level acceptance criteria
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Sign off on the Jira backlog
INTERVIEWS
We interviewed stakeholders of many domains within stc Kuwait, most notably Mohammed Gamal and Product development advisor. Going forward these 2 stakeholders were SPOCs and were present in our weekly sync meetings. During these interviews questions were asked about their roles, business objectives, dependencies, project schedule and technology.
KEY INSIGHTS
After meeting with stakeholders the team in the debrief gathered notes and found a patterns. These patterns led to insights and formed the foundation of the next round of presentations.
Overall, there was a strong needs for a unified CMS for customers but also to streamline workflows for the internal teams at stc Kuwait. Self-Care was regarded as the single interaction where customers find what they are looking for. The project was a company wide exercise to reorganise front and back-end. There was an expectation to be market leaders and promise state-of-the-art experiences. Many stakeholders said that customer experience was not a main driver for strategy and prioritization.
01/ Digital Ecosystem
Our digital touchpoint ecosystem is fragmented, both on the frontend and on the backend
02/ Value Proposition
We want to provide an integrated and seamless experience across all digital touchpoints
03/ Internal Processes
Our internal processes for product development can be faster and more flexible
04/ Product Pipeline
We want to be considered state-of-the-art in the telco sector
05/ User Centricity
We should get in touch with the final customers more often to know them better
06/ Personalization
We need personalization for improving customer experience and augment the sales channels
EXPERIENCE PRINCIPLES
Based on these insights, the team decided on 4 pillars for experience design marking a new strategic vision to drive and inspire the design. To drive these principles forward 8 key themes were identified in order to meet customer and business needs.
Sprint Process
ANATOMY OF A SPRINT
Epics agreed upon with the Project Managers were to be designed for in the first sprint by designers. A discussion with stakeholders would lead to a design freeze and the Development team would then take up. The Design and Dev Lead would exchange stories and product structures. In the meeting of the next design sprint, the dev team would showcase their progress and SPOCs would get to give feedback and answer questions.
Anatomy of sprint
Design Language System
The Design Language System is a tool; a scalable, living, centralised repository of principles, templates, components and other assets that help internal teams accelerate their efforts. The STC DLS is incorporating design principles that help define a philosophy around the design approach within the company. The structure provided frameworks, models, templates, components and elements which are easy to find, understand and apply.
Epics
To investigate and get to know the context, a team was assembled from Olam Cocoa, Infosys, Bain Consultancy and Moonraft. Field Experts, Technologists, Strategists, Designers and a few translators gathered in Lampung, Indonesia to learn about the local culture, problem area and opportunities.
OWNERSHIP
I was responsible for a few epics. Each of them had their own user stories usually in double digits.
EPIC 1
Self-care
In this epic we covered User stories Login and Registration, Account Settings, Pay Bills, Subscribing to and Changing Packages, Purchasing Accessories, Payment Methods, Penalties, Qitaf Loyalty, and many other use cases.
EPIC 2
Pay Bills
I learnt about the paying bill flow from the stakeholders Eli and Gamal. Stakeholders presented their existing flows on Jira. The bill flow had many sub use-cases such as quickpay, viewing bills, schedule payments, paying custom amount, paying for others, paying multiple bills and paying with Qitaf points.
Later in the Kiosk phase I had the ownership of this particular feature and I had to forego detailed elements in favor of simplicity as the usage context. In this part of the experience the kiosk touchpoint had to have only the bare essential information that could be delivered in the shortest task flow possible.
EPIC 3
Add primary device
I learnt about the paying bill flow from the stakeholders Eli and Gamal. Stakeholders presented their existing flows on Jira.
Based on the packages people have they are eligible for primary and secondary devices. The challenge here was to design interaction design elements for each of the unique usecases. At this point I was completely immersed in the CMS with the help of Elie.
EPIC 4
Qitaf Loyalty
I learnt about the paying bill flow from the stakeholders Eli and Gamal. Stakeholders presented their existing flows on Jira.
Customers can pay their bills from their app or the browser and expect the same level of interactions and behaviors.
OTHER FEATURES
There is a lot to discuss with this project and not everything can be put here as there are some part behind an NDA. There were several features, discussions, processes, challenges and complications to overcome. Within 10 months the team and I worked on setting up an elaborate system of telecom touchpoints. The products became live in May 2021 and since then millions of Kuwaitis have used them on a daily basis.
