Portfolio level analysis in Earth Blox

Overview

The problem:
Using the Earth Blox product to analyse multiple locations was time consuming, inefficient, and difficult to get comparable results, holding back account growth potential.

The goal:
Allow customers to get geospatially derived insights for thousands of locations in their portfolios to inform critical business decisions.

Outcome:
A new offering within the Earth Blox product that unlocked growth opportunities with existing customers and new enterprise level accounts.

My role

Lead designer and UX researcher, working alongside the Head of Product and Head of Engineering and the Engineering team through discovery and delivery phases.

• Research interviews with current customers and target personas

• Uncovering Jobs to be Done for core customer types, synthesising and communicating research insights to stakeholders

• Wireframing, prototyping and testing concepts with customers, iterating and creating high fidelity designs and user requirements

• Prioritising critical user flows and functionality for initial release within tight time constraints 

Context

The core Earth Blox product enables customers to build custom workflows and get detailed geospatial insights for a single location, but customers and prospects required insights for portfolios spanning hundreds or thousands of locations (supply chains, global operations).

• Inefficiency scaling
  Processing large numbers of locations is frustratingly slow and prone to timing out

• Usability barriers
  Current workflow building tool unintuitive for target audience of analysts without extensive geospatial expertise

• Results presentation
  Outputted data presented in formats unsuited for large numbers of locations

Discovery & Research

Uncovering needs of new target customer groups

• Collaborating with Head of Marketing to create target profiles 

• Direct outreach through LinkedIn to source research participants

• Open discovery interviews to uncover Jobs to Be Done and challenges with current tooling

Identifying needs of current customers 

• Discovery calls to understand the wider customer journey including steps outside of the Earth Blox platform

• Testing prototyped concepts to understand various mental models around geospatial data

• Uncovering workarounds or ‘hacks’ used by customers that indicate unaddressed needs

• Collating insights from Customer Success team members who work closely with key accounts

Key UX decisions

Extending the existing Earth Blox experience

I challenged the team’s initial approach of starting from scratch to build a new tool separate to the existing Earth Blox product.

• Research showed that once customers had run an analysis on an entire portfolio of locations, their next logical step is to run in-depth analysis on high priority locations.

• Increases opportunities for current customers to discover and adopt the new tool, and avoids friction of switching between platforms 

Creating a new visual workflow builder

The transparency and flexibility afforded by a visual workflow building system is a key reason for customers to choose Earth Blox.

• Concept testing showed that a visual workflow builder resonated most strongly with new and existing users to enrich their location data compared to out of the box results

• A visual workflow builder provides a foundation for AI assisted workflow creation using the Human-in-the-loop framework to reinforce model training and ensure accuracy 

• Crucial for customers could view a workflow and understand what was happening even if they hadn’t built it. 

Reducing cognitive load

This was an opportunity to design a new workflow building system which could then also be adapted to replace Blockly in the individual site analysis workspace in the future. The new system increased clarity and reduced overwhelm by:

• Using the node-edge pattern familiar from flow charting and tools such as Zapier

• Showing only the most critical, scannable information in the blocks in the workspace

• Layering detailed information and form controls in a side panel

• Using established patterns to reduce cognitive load for customers familiar with current Earth Blox workspace

Reducing the cost of mistakes

Customers often learned the hard way that workflow often had hidden mistakes that became apparent once they had waited hours to view their results. 

• Implementing a preview stage that provides sample results to sense check before running an analysis on an entire portfolio of locations

• Anticipating and allowing customers to learn from “inexpensive” mistakes and increase their understanding of how the product works

Outcomes

A customer ready tool ready for the Sales and Customer Success teams to demonstrate value to customers and prospects. 

• Unlocked the ability to consistently analyse thousands of locations, reducing time to build analyses from days to minutes, and informing critical business decisions

• A foundational UI system that can be expanded to accommodate new customer needs for building complex geospatial analysis workflows.