Research: Visualizing Alignment

“We shouldn’t be struggling this much to talk about our value to customers!” -CMO

Outcomes

Alignment of exective and leadership teams on new way of talking about value of portfolio.

Alignment of organization around data priorities.

New marketing initiative leveraging analogy of customer journey through data.

Established new way of collaborative work across organizational silos.

Simplified the User Journey

Context

A Chief Marketing Officer wants to increase sales and customer footprint.
The organization serves healthcare systems, pharmaceutical companies, and government regulatory bodies globally.
They need a way to talk to customers about the value of data insights they deliver.

Problem

Jargon is blocking communication with customers and between internal teams.
Customers are confused about products and services.
Reaching alignment is challenging across internal teams.

My Role

Senior Product Designer leading research and strategy.
I initiated and lead this project, including development of several novel frameworks and methods.

Research Plan

Purpose: increase sales, expand customer footprint.

Objective: define the value of our offerings.

Strategy: engage key stakeholders from all layers of the organization.

Tactic: map the collective understanding of value, effort, and priority.

Actions: listen to stakeholders; analyze insights; convene leaders to discuss and align.

Insights

Structural and linguistic barriers impede clear communication between organizational units and layers.

An individual’s role within an organization impacts their assessment of value, effort and priority.

There are gaps in understanding of the same words between disciplines.

Prototyping

I created a framework based on a patient’s healthcare journey to contextualize 34+ critical data elements and corresponding assessment tool, below.

Testing

Individual subject matter experts (SMEs) participated in conversations to map critical data elements by value, effort, and priority.

Results

Visualize Insights

Priority assessment data shows clear inflection points. These points show where there is alignment across the organization.

Define Offerings

A clear product portfolio emerges from the alignment, translating into value in the market.

Bridge the Language Gap

Customers, Engineers, and Product Owners all speak different languages.

This novel diagram starts with fundamental customer questions and related journeys through data elements. The pathways navigate existing offerings, landing on digital user interface (UI) elements to help Product Owners and Engineers focus on customer value of these elements.