PIA ZARAGOZA

Microsoft

Role: Design Researcher (Contract)

Dates
December 2016 - February 2018

Overview
According to a Work Trend Index Report from Microsoft, it is estimated that 80% of the world’s workforce is made up of frontline workers. Microsoft StaffHub was first released in January 2017 with the goal of creating tools dedicated to powering the frontline workforce. I was part of a team of 5 Design Researchers that conducted end to end research on the product.

Research Questions
Early on, our research was focused on understanding product market fit. Some of our initial research questions included:

  • What is the primary benefit that users received from using StaffHub?

  • How would users feel if they could no longer use StaffHub?

  • How can we improve StaffHub to better meet users’ needs?

  • Have users’ recommended StaffHub to anyone?

Subsequent rounds of research were focused on informing web and mobile product iterations. Some deliverables that were created during this time included an interactive card sort, a user journey map, usability studies, and UserVoice reports with selected excerpts in the screenshots below. Key questions related to this work included:

  • What are the daily information and communication needs of managers and shift workers?

  • What types of interactions can managers and shift workers have with technology during their shifts?

  • How do managers and shift workers feel about using StaffHub before, during, and after their shifts?

Product LOVE
My team developed a research framework to understand and measure how customers felt about our products. I had the opportunity to contribute to the workshop design that was given during the 2017 Microsoft User Experience Experience Research Day. With the goal being product love, these were some of the dimensions that were being explored:

L = Longitudinal
O = Operationalize
V = Viable
E = Extensible

Reflections
A major lesson that I learned in doing this work was understanding the differences in designing for small and midsize businesses (SMB) vs. enterprise companies. I continued to do research in this space and saw that M12, Microsoft’s investment arm, funded Skedulo, a similar product in 2019. Later in 2020, StaffHub converged with Microsoft Teams.

Link: Product Demo