As lead UX strategist for FedEx Service’s business apps, it was my responsibility to lead the research and design teams to develop a modernized billing application. Working with product and IT, we defined requirements, developed new user flows, and assigned journey mapping to our new application.
For FBO, we needed to unravel existing functionality and determine what users found most valuable. After completing our wireframes, we tested internal navigation, invoice structure, billing features, and data presentment on UserTesting.com. We built tasks for users to complete, gauged effectiveness of our flows, and made corrections based on feedback.
Below is the steps we took to launch the MVR and how we plan to iterate on the final design with Agile to steadily improve the application.
Through in-depth interviews and conversations with over 50 customers, we were able to assign three unique profiles to the billing platform. This was our North Star through the entire experience design cycle. We revisit these personas every three months.
At FedEx, we wireframe at high fidelity. This allows us to rapidly prototype workable solutions early on. For FedEx Billing Online, we knew we needed to reduce the number of functions in the app, while in turn making it more functional. This meant making the application leaner and smarter.
we introduced novel navigation like kebabs and also updated our notification designs to make in-page messaging more useful and “just in time”. We condensed several separate pages into modules and removed access to less used functionality until it was needed.
in keeping with the Agile framework, we tested iteratively when we finalized features. This allowed us to remain nimble and focused in our design work and didn’t bog down development with needless changes.
Our testing patterns were in line with the Agile cadence of developments PIs. We were staying 2 to 3 sprints ahead in order to build requirements out for mini planning sessions every four weeks. This was not the ideal cadence for our UX runway, but the initiative demanded an aggressive timeline.
To the right is an example of feedback from one of our feature tests. Unmoderated qualitative testing allowed us to continue to design and incorporate feedback simultaneously.
The application we have delivered has received consistent 8 or above out of 10 on the ease of use scale and has a System Usability score of 88. We are currently designing the augmented administrative functions and incorporating reporting and claims functions into Billing. This is something we have heard from users, the desire for a “one-stop shop” for business functions. The fully functional new FedEx Billing application will launch in October of 2023.
