DELL YOURID
BACKGROUND
Client: Dell, Inc.
Request: Dell Enterprise OEM wanted a way for their customers to more easily and intuitively provide the right assets and content Dell needed to customize the branding for OEM enterprise server systems BIOS and startup screens. The current manual process was fraught with mistakes and rework, often requiring hands on support from Dell.
Challenges: We had very little access to the end users and had a large, very invested team of Dell stakeholders. The discovery period probably could have been lengthier in order to prevent some rework further down the line.
Budget: $250k
Timeline: 8 months
PROCESS
Creative Strategy: A discovery workshop followed by a short discovery period allowed us to capture a good deal of information from the Dell regarding their needs as well as those of their customers. The workshop helped them to prioritize their requirements while the discovery period allowed us to start investigating possible approaches and gain deeper insight into challenges on both sides. During this time, it became apparent that the application would require three separate customer paths supported by a Dell internal project management back-end for tracking a project from inception to delivery.
Production: As creative lead, I worked closely with our development partner in Florida in order to create a waterfall/agile hybrid process by which our design team would create style guides and page layouts, then hand them off in agile-style sprints. Once the functional strategy was defined for each sprint, UX and UI production was handed off to our production designers, which would then be handed to the development team. The developers would then rapidly prototype based on these documents and post them for our review.
Customer User Paths: Working closely with the client, we determined the path options available to customers based on generation and type of device requested in order to produce the correct customized BIOS and startup screens. The biggest challenge were the requirements around image formats and sizes accepted for logo customization. We designed an image upload interface that would automatically error check and provide feedback to the user for incorrect formats. We also provided a dynamic preview to show exactly how the logo would appear in context with the existing template.
Project Management Process Tracker: Dell's project managers required an interface to organize and manage submitted projects. We designed a linear, gated system that passed the ball back and forth between the customer and the project manager depending in order to create a consistent, repeatable processes, which would in turn keep a version-controlled record of the shared assets.
RESULTS
As usage of the site ramped up in the following months, the client reported seeing immediate results with turnaround times being cut from as high as 6 months down to as low as several weeks or less. Within a few months, they had secured a new budget and re-engaged Somnio for a series of updates to further improve the user interface and user friendliness of the system.
My Role: Creative Lead
Design Team: Rusty Kocian, Chrissy Cowdrey, Chris Latham
Client: Dell OEM
Agency: Somnio Solutions
Responsibilities:
- User Experience Strategy
- Creative Direction
- Team Management
- Requirements Documentation