Sandbox trial

Using the product to sell itself, as part of our new PLG (product-led growth) strategy, was a fairly big paradigm shift for our teams. With complex functionality, use cases, and setup, our products leaned heavily on the work of our sales teams to gain new customers. To remedy this, and to better engage prospective customers according to their preferences, we used research insights to compel our executive leadership to invest in the sandbox trial initiative.

As an enterprise software designer, it isn't often that I've had the opportunity to focus on the prospective buyer as a user. Figuring out how to craft an experience that would immediately capture their interest and quickly get them to the aha moments of understanding in our massive and complex products before they lost interest was a fun challenge. 

What kind of dummy data do we need to support a compelling story? How can we keep that data fresh? How do we help users discover value as they explore on their own? What kind of guided experience would people actually want to follow? Our product does all of this incredible stuff – what are the few key things they need to experience and learn at this point in their Learn-Try-Buy journey to get them to a POC? These were some of the questions I enjoyed figuring out with my cross-discipline team.  

Oh, and very few other IBM software products had created this kind of experience for us to model after, so we were pioneering a new path for other teams to follow.

1. Quick turnarounds for concept prototypes
2. Days before our delivery date, a "stop-ship" bug that risked delaying delivery and creating poor UX.
3. Aligning multiple, changing stakeholders and navigating technical constraints and back-end requirements.

1. Crafted the project's Hill and experience-based roadmap.
2. Collaborated with PMs, researchers, architects, sales, and marketing teams to identify the flows that would best highlight the product’s value.
3. Coordinated the design team’s efforts (content, illustrations, research) and crafted the flows. 
4. Facilitated early conversations on back-end needs. Identified and gathered the right team to resolve critical bugs and deliver the sandbox trial on time.
5. Conducted multiple UX research studies to evaluate the sandbox trial concept and experience, sharing learnings with product teams across IBM. 
6. Rebuilt novice to pro just-in-time (JIT) components to be used in WalkMe to showcase product value. Packaged and shared these custom WalkMe components and tutorials for broader IBM Software teams to improve onboarding and user engagement.

1. Created engaging, user-centric experiences stakeholders and research participants praised for their clarity, value, and impact.
2. Established the product's first plan for instrumenting metrics.
3. Earned the Client Partner Success Award for meeting tight deadlines with high-quality work.
4. Delivered reusable guidance, patterns, and components that are now shaping sandbox trial practices across IBM products to drive user acquisition, activation, and conversion.

“It just did a really good job of simply explaining what this is and why it's useful.” 

“So far this is probably the most interesting ‘on rails’ demo that I've been a part of. Usually I just glaze right over these things…[the guided walkthough] was surprisingly useful from start to finish. It didn't drag. It went right to the point…Not just knowing that ‘here's what the tool can do’. I know that there's a bunch of other stuff I can connect it to to make it more useful.”