Solution Navigator, Johnson Controls’ Global Customer Enablement platform.

As the Experience Leader, I oversaw a multidisciplinary User Experience team in the redesign of Solution Navigator. I led internal UX operations to drive end-to-end experiences by steering complete progressions connected with 3 Agile release trains, including 37 development teams, streamlining 82+ applications into a cohesive experience.

THE PROBLEM

Johnson Controls’ channel partners told us we were difficult to do business with and that we lagged competition. This was especially problematic for our partners that purchase across multiple product business units. Antiquated and/or nonexistent digital platforms across our global products provided a suboptimal, disconnected experience and increased our overall cost to serve.

OUR VISION

Deliver a best-in-class, customer-facing self-service platform that provides a unified digital experience for channel partners across the product lifecycle including — product information, configuration, pricing, ordering, order & tracking visibility, warranty processing, training, marketing, and invoice visibility.

UX PROCESS LEADERSHIP

Large-scale projects like this means there are a lot of moving parts. One of the things I did early on was establish a working rhythm with agile engineering teams to ensure design was incorporated as a strategic pillar in the project, without becoming a bottleneck. Each feature (large or small) followed a systematic UX process and was mapped out 3 months in advance with UX sprint deliverables as a predecessor for engineering.

I defined our presence in every stage of the agile process to ensure User Experience and customer needs had a seat at the table with our business leaders.

DISCOVERY

As a legacy platform that previously only served North America, we knew would need to talk with JCI business leaders and customers around the world in order to scale globally. Upfront discovery started with stakeholder interviews of internal stakeholders, customers, users of the future product, and third-party partners impacted by the product and workflow. Once we had a broad understanding of the goals of the product, we facilitated a workshops to ensure all business stakeholders were aligned. Together, we aligned on a vision statement to serve as the product North Star, then crafted the key personas, and defined the journey map. These outputs gave a framework for discovery research—what questions to ask, and what assumptions to validate.

As the platform progressed, each feature followed a similar discovery process. My team worked closely with business stakeholders and customers to define requirements from legacy tools or new product innovation, moving through a detailed process to validate assumptions and critical “must haves”.

DEFINE

We found that each region had produced its own unique tools to help with individual market growth, consolidating these would be a must. With so many disjointed experiences, innovation was slow or impossible. Many of these platforms were based on layers of legacy software and had no responsive value. Information architecture across platforms was dated, and in some areas, too cumbersome to navigate. As a result this produced massive load times and often cost companies work. On top of all of this there was a huge cultural divide in how business was conducted.

IDEATE

During the design phases of each feature, we leveraged an agile design framework to plan and track our work. When assigning work, I took a collaborative design approach that paired UX and UI designers to work together to deliver screens, each providing their expertise when required.

Design began with userflow diagram mapping, and progressed through low fidelity wireframing, to mid and high fidelity mockups/prototypes. During the design phase, I encourage the team to work autonomously with stakeholders through iterations, pulling in supporting team members as needed.

I also oversaw the creation of a responsive design system, resulting in a cohesive user experience and efficient design and development processes. Our design system is modern and accessible while remaining true to the established Solution Navigator brand.

Adherence to our design system, along with effective ways of working, allowed us to meet our deadlines and deliver nearly 2000 unique screens integrating 82+ applications and simplifying 40+ workflows, ultimately creating a digital experience that simplifies the way channel partners do business with JCI.

SOLUTION NAVIGATOR HIGHLIGHTS