User Therapy Sessions : UX research as a morale tool
A few years ago I was on a design team inside of a 15,000-plus employee company that focuses on cell phone insurance and retail warrantees. I spent nearly 4 years on that team getting to know almost every aspect of a very complex product ecosystem. My last year there was spent as lead designer on an internal tool that our call center agents used to process insurance claims. I had taken over the product after it cycled through 4 or 5 different designers.
Filing a claim is a relatively rigid process defined by the legal team, which left little wiggle room in the interface and workflow. Internal employees (especially call center agents) tend to be more hesitant to complain to someone they don’t know about their issues with their platform. We would do weekly user interviews and would consistently hear “The platform is just great, it’s so much better than the old one” and no criticism. However, we knew that agents were unhappy with the platform as they would frequently complain to their supervisors and to each other.
I made a point to build relationships with certain users outside of the weekly user interviews. I got to know these individuals as more than just users of the platform. We would meet casually, and I would always say, “you’re not going to hurt my feelings by bitching about this software” I would make sure they didn’t feel…
