Einstein 360 - Comcast
Comcast has more than 130,000 customer support employees, handling over 1 million phone calls a day, and they rely on Einstein 360 to offer their customers quick and valuable support. Originally three separate applications, Einstein 360 is an enterprise level software application that serves as a customer database, support ticket manager, and billing portal for call center representatives. I joined a team of contractors with the goal of integrating all three applications into one unified and intuitive experience.
User Research
With such a wealth of information at our user’s fingerprints, our primary challenge was in sorting and surfacing the most relevant information for our customer service representatives. This meant we needed to anticipate our caller’s needs in advance, which meant we needed to learn as much as we could about Comcast’s customers.
Our team sat in with call center representatives and listened in to a combined 1200 hours of calls to determine customer’s primary requests and Comcast’s current solutions. Observing how the representatives used the current system allowed us to build a product that was easy for them to transition to at the end of our development cycle.
Wireframes & Protoypes
Next we began work on low-fidelity wireframes. These are simple layouts, usually designed in grayscale, to show the client our suggested UX solution without distracting our users too much with subjective reaction to colors. After learning our user’s priorities, our second unique challenge arose: How do we incorporate current features into a new UI in the most intuitive way?
After getting general approval on our wireframes, we moved into testing with semi-interactive prototypes using Invision, an online software which allows designers to link art files together and simulate a virtual experience. We walked users through each of our screens and recorded each use for discussion and takeaways.
Development Handoff
Developing the Einstein system is an ongoing process at Comcast involving many cross-disciplinary teams.
Using an Agile workflow, my team worked with dedicated product owners to prioritize features and plan each two week sprint, and supported developers with design fixes and UX suggestions based on our user research.
Takeaways
My personal takeaways from this project were all related to the importance of user research and testing in the discovery phase. We estimated that we saved our own team over 500 hours of wasted discovery hours by going straight to the source and seeing what worked. Don’t re-invent the wheel, just make the wheel better.