‘My Vodafone App’ for business
Enhancing the MVA10 consumer app to include features that meet the needs of business customers
My Vodafone App for Business
The brief
To expand the features & capabilities of the MVA10 consumer app, to meet the needs of Vodafone’s businesses and open new growth opportunities, for Vodafone’s markets.
The solution
To create a seamless design solution that enables business users to monitor their business accounts, manage, & maintain their products and highlight actions in an intuitive and effective way, validated by user research, testing and behaviours.
Deep dive
Expanding the apps capabilities to almost twice the size, the apps I.A., structure, navigation & ease-of-use was fundamental to being an easy-to-use & adopt product.
Project highlight
Spearheaded the need for further project requirements, by running workshops in the UK and Germany, and further remote workshops to include up to 9 markets at once.
Meeting the needs of the business
In early 2020 I led a team of 4 designers on a 6-month transformation project to enhance the MVA10 consumer app, to meet the needs of Vodafone’s business customers, covering a range of sectors and focussing on SOHO, small and medium sized businesses.
Building within a Design System
All designs were built using Source, Vodafone’s ‘Web simplicity 10’ Design System, evolving it when needed alongside the ‘Group’ design team, so that all assets met their guidelines.
Every sprint started with ‘Design Thinking’ workshops, with clickable prototypes tested every two design sprints. Core findings were applied to designs, with final designs built into annotated handover documentation, paired with an end-to-end ‘mega prototype’ to engage markets.
Tools & methods used
Discovery interviews & workshops, Agile workflow, cross-organisation collaboration, ‘Design Thinking’ workshops, digital prototypes, user testing & client presentations.
This case study has been summarised below. To see the full content, or save the full case study, please click on the links below…
Case study
Discovery workshops in markets & remote
Discovery workshops in London and Dusseldorf
Kicking-off a discovery & design process with Vodafone business, I led the Reply team in a series of requirement gathering workshops, both in London and Vodafone’s German hub in Dusseldorf.
Each core area of the consumer app was explored to understand the apps potential for its business customers. The output was digested, and played back in a prioritisation exercise for ‘Must have’, ‘Nice to have’, ‘Future thinking’ and ‘Not required’, with the first two categories progressing to the design phase.
Examples of areas to move forward with were:
• Business rolled up view and drill down into account levels
• Browse through a ‘digital marketplace’ to purchase and manage software (apps) licences
• Overview of the current bill and drill down into details, with the ability to download bill(s)
Mapping out new features
Understanding the MVA10 Information Architecture (IA)
As part of the discovery phase, understanding the agreed SOP, structure of the current MVA10 consumer app, and expectation of new feature and capability integration was essential.
Mapping out all the current app’s features & capabilities, against the documented structure, enabled us to map the expected location of the new/prioritised features & capabilities and agree this new structure with the client, before design work could begin.
New Information architecture
Agreed structure & final I.A.
Throughout the design process the new I.A. was digitised and used as a reference point, including user testing it’s structure and amending it, where necessary.
Due to the increase in the I.A.’s footprint, ensuring that the app was kept lean, met business user’s needs and that features were of value to users, were all tested, both in principle and focussed on during user testing.
The final I.A. was adjusted to meet user’s actual needs, where they would expect to find these features, and improved signposting throughout the app. This included agreement from the UK, German and Turkish markets.
Design thinking workshops
The design phase commences…
In the second phase of engagement, the sub-projects that had been mapped out were divided into design sprints. For each sprint, one or two sub-sections were tackled, with each sprint starting with a Design Thinking workshop. Experts from Vodafone’s transformation, product, technology and CX teams joined the workshops.
Each workshop consisted of explaining the brief and user stories, a playback/sharing of guerrilla research, Q&A quick-fire requirement information, time-boxed designing/wireframing/process flows, showcase, dot voting and capturing ideas. At this point, we had captured all we could and rounded off the client session.
Proto-designs
Design-thinking workshop part II
Once the client had left, I led the design team in a second wave of designs that followed the first, showcase. As a team we discussed the ideas against each brief/ feature/ capability, capturing and annotating the best ideas as we went.
We captured the essential details, best ideas and compiled them into ’Proto-designs’, a term coined to solve a challenge that the level of ‘design fidelity’ had different meanings, across Vodafone’s various markets/regions.
These combined designs were highly annotated first design drafts, created with the teams hive-mind; agreed upon and divided between the team. At this stage the workshop output, including the proto-designs, were shared with the client for transparency and due diligence.
These designs were then worked-up in Sketch, using Vodafone’s design system components (Source), to create the initial digital wireframes.
Enhancing the business experience
Account overview at-a-glance
The enhancements for MVA10 for business users focussed on key journey’s that business administrators (chooser/ user+) would need to perform in the app.
Once a user has logged in, switching between accounts is seamless, using single-sign-on, with a clear change in UI between consumer and business UI in background, icons & key content, but all built on the same framework and design system principles.
Intuitive discovery & accessibility
For business users a clear overview of the products, overall bills and ability to quickly drill-down tofind relevant information was key. Highlighting changes and actions to take directs the chooser/user+ to their next best actions.
Within the menus, access to products, licences, users and actions requiring their attention are key, with the ability to quickly switch accounts.
User testing & Treejack testing
Investigating, split testing & validation
With a clear understanding of Vodafone’s business needs, and that of its business users, the Information architecture, structure and core journeys were heavily stress tested. This included heat-map testing, Treejack testing and targeted questions to truly understand if designs were meeting the needs of business users.
Various scenarios were tested, with follow-up questions aimed at really understanding the business needs and ability to access information. In doing so, customer behaviours were captured and shared with Vodafone.
Confidence in data-driven decisions
Multiple iterations of designs were tested in quick-fire split tests to find out which approach was easily understood, most effective, and in doing so, saved a lot of development time & cost, by simplifying the product and removing features & capabilities that would not be used.
Applications (Vodafone marketplace)
A significant expansion to the MVA10 app for businesses is the addition of Applications. This enables Choosers/ Users+ to purchase, manage and assign licences to applications for all the companies employees.
A further enhancement to follow allows business to not only manage licences for employees, but to also pre-approve them and to view, approve/reject application requests from their employees.
Introducing apps for businesses
Administration capabilities
Building upon licences, a further enhancement to-follow, allows business to not only manage licencesfor employees, but to also pre-approve them and to view, approve/reject application requests from their employees.
Allowing admins to also see historic requests & past decisions, allows admins to see who is requesting apps, but also which apps are important to their staff and help decide the best solutions for their businesses.
Managing application licences
Understanding the needs of different business sizes/ types, Choosers (master admin) are able to assign rights to users, including flexible privilege levels to create User+ admins, including approving/ rejecting, assigning/ reassigning licences and purchasing products.
Managing user settings & privileges
Enhanced billing functionality
Billing as a section was expanded to meet business needs to quickly drill-down into where costs are coming from at business, group (e.g. a location/team) or user levels.
Priority was given to help admins to quickly locate & understand the source of spending, navigate to & adjust products & services, with supporting visualisations to make information easy to digest.
Billing overview at-a-glance
“I really like this. We are with O2 and there are only three of us. I need to swap between individual users and look at their bills and usage separately.”
Handover documentation
Standardised documentation format
Wrapping up the first significant project with Vodafone business, one of the delivery/ handover documents was to supply all designs/ screens in the standardised format that Vodafone’s own teams must follow.
The19 sets of features and capabilities that our team created each had its own PDF, with user stories & flows mapped out, with full annotated screen-flows. A further master board was also created to summarise the project, partnered with a ‘Mega-prototype’, where all the designed journeys could be played back from within a single prototype.
Expected interactions and behaviours were highlighted, alongside descriptions of the functionality, to ensure that the designs could be developed, as intended.
The output of the pilot partnership was so successful that the mega-prototype was played far-and-wide across Vodafone and paved the way for a further 3 major projects, which I was fortunate enough to lead, in my time at Reply.
User tested mega-prototype
Final round user testing…
Wrapping up the project, a final round of user testing was carried out to sense-check, validate, and benchmark the usability of the app and all it’s enhancements in one place.
All users perceived the layout as attractive and very much on-brand for Vodafone.
“It looks very similar to the one I use on my personal phone,
…that’s a good thing”
Key findings…
Right from the start, users were interested in the Applications appearing on the dashboard, when investigating the software options.
Users were able to easily navigate and find new features and interact with them, with positive engagement and a desire to see the app grow and seeing value in them for their businesses.
“I didn’t know Vodafone did software like that?
…that’s quite interesting”
A taster of things to come
MVA10 business app recap
• The consumer app has been enhanced to cover a range of essential journeys for businesses
• Key insights were applied to designs from end-of-sprint user testing, on both the Information architecture and designs
• Designs were validated via further user testing, using a ‘mega-prototype’, which included all enhancements
• A handover report and assets for markets and developers was created, including user flows and screens annotated to show interactions
