CHALLENGE

Since the T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint, users had no way to get all of their business reports in one place. They had to use two different tools, one on the T-Mobile side and one on the Sprint side, to get subsets of data and then merge the insights separately in a spreadsheet. It was difficult and time consuming and they often ended up calling Care (T-Mobile customer support) instead of doing it themselves.

APPROACH & KEY INSIGHTS

Feedback from the users was clear:​

Users want to be able to generate billing and other reports themselves in one app instead of having to go to two different tools or calling Care for help.

SOLUTION

By creating one place where users can pull up billing reports themselves, we will reduce the number of steps they need to take to get their data and will allow them to perform that action independently, without having to get support from T-Mobile.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Duration: 3 months

Role: I worked with 3 other designers. I focused mostly on interaction design for report creation and ordering flow, but assisted with the remaining flows and screen. Then, we worked with two visual designers to ensure we were aligned with the T-Mobile for Business Design Systems’ styles specific to Account Hub application.

Toolkit: stakeholder interviews, user flows, design patterns, wireframes, prototypes

Deliverables: Adobe XD prototype, client presentations

UNDERSTAND

At the beginning of the project, we had a couple intake meetings with the product owner and with subject matter experts. We wanted to understand:

• What is the scope of the project?

• What are the existing reporting tools and how they work?

• What current reporting features work well and which ones receive the most complaints from users?

• What are the expected outputs of our work?

• What are the timelines?

RESEARCH

USER RESEARCH

The timeline for this project was very tight and the product owner didn’t want to spend any time on primary research, but we insisted that we need to get some user interviews. In the end we were able to conduct one, but very insightful interview with a business owner, who was a power user of the two reporting apps we were replacing. She was able to share:

• what her current workflow is when creating reports,

• what works well for her in each of the applications,

• which reports she runs frequently,

• what doesn’t work well in each application,

• which functionality is missing or could be improved.

She also has used some of the competitors’ reporting apps and shared some thoughts about those as well.

COMPETITIVE & COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

We then did secondary research to review what were the industry standards for reporting. We also looked at reporting apps available at other companies in the telecommunication space. With all this info, we were able to start designing.

DESIGN

ENTRY POINT

The first design problem we focused on was the entry point for reporting. We were creating a micro app, which was supposed to be a part of a bigger and complex business application called Account Hub. At that time there was no reporting functionality available on Account Hub and it was desperately needed, so this new micro app had to be visible and easy to access. We discussed three possibilities:

1. Reporting at the front and center of the dashboard page users land on after logging in.

2. Reporting as a subsection under Billing.

3. Reporting as a separate section in the universal navigation bar on the left. The difficulty here was that the unav was controlled by a different group within T-Mobile, who vowed that no additions were allowed to the list of options currently available on the nav bar.

We presented all three options to the stakeholders. After a careful consideration, the decision was made to add Reporting to the universal navigation.

REPORTS CREATION

For this design problem, I focused on ensuring the users have a clear step-by-step process which would allow them to get the right information at the right time. I suggested to the team that we should design in low-fidelity at first, so that discussions with stakeholders can center around the user journey, the flow, and the interactions.

Key Design Decisions:

• Adding a progress bar, so that users can see how far along they are in the process of generating a report.

• Progressive disclosure to ensure users are presented with just the right information to perform different actions.

• Taking advantage of the “sticky footer” pattern available in the Account Hub design system library, which allows the users to have an easy access to the CTAs.

SUBSCRIBING TO REPORTS

The Sprint application had an option to order a monthly generated billing report and to have it delivered to one’s inbox. We took this functionality even further and designed a way for users to subscribe to any report at any cadence they wanted.

Key Design Decisions:

• Users have the affordances to customize reports before creating them.

• Users have the ability to select the cadence and end date of their report subscription.

TEST

We tested the prototype with members of the Care team. The initial feedback was very positive and they were excited to have the Reporting Micro App available, so they can show the business end users how much easier it now is to generate reports in one place instead of pulling data from two different sources.

HANDOFF

We presented the designs to the product, business, and Care stakeholders. The designs were well received and approved. Development and QA of this Reporting Micro App is still in progress and should go live before the end of this year.

Key Takeaways:

• This project will give users a way to independently create their telecommunication related business reports.

• Once live, Reporting Micro App is expected to positively affect T-Mobile’s bottom line by reducing the number of calls to the Care team.

• Users will have the freedom to pull the data they need in one place, subscribe to a report, share, download or print their reports.