About

Challenge:
Customers didn’t feel appreciated or rewarded for staying with Vodafone, and the product team had already proposed four value-add services without validating whether customers actually wanted them

Client:
Vodafone

My Role:
Lead Product Designer

Key Outcomes

The product team had a proposal, but no evidence customers wanted it

The Vodafone product team approached the UX team for help shaping a design brief for proposed value-add services on the self-service app. While the business goal—reducing churn—was clear, there was no evidence yet that customers actually wanted, or would use, what was being proposed. We offered to run research to validate and shape the proposal, bringing the product team along on that journey rather than presenting findings cold.

Market analysis

My first step was a market analysis of every service in the proposal, to inform myself and shape the questions I’d bring to the Product Owner.

Clarifying business intentions

I workshopped with the Product Owner to write a Mission Statement connecting the business’s need to the user need it was assumed to solve: reduce churn by making the app more engaging, against the assumed pain of “no reward for staying loyal to Vodafone.”

A workshop split 4 proposed services into 7 for detailed value analysis

With the business need and assumptions clarified, I ran an inception workshop with the Product Owner and stakeholders to brainstorm the detail behind each proposed service and how each might actually work.

• Purpose: Bring a UX/Service Design lens to align business and user needs, and identify what still needed for research
• Goal: An initial feature list to sense-check with users and technology
• Method: Diverge and collect ideas widely, not solutioning yet

The session surfaced enough nuance that the original four proposed services split into seven, each given its own Mission Statement to check it actually tied back to the core business need.

After discussion, one service didn’t fit and was cut, leaving six services to test with customers.

Two focus groups tested desire for six proposed services

With clearer intent, I worked with our Lead Researcher to run two focus groups exploring desirability and perceived value for each of the six services.

Process:

• Prepare workbook
• Recruit and screen
• Book sessions and invite the Product Team
• Facilitate
• Analyse and synthesise

We first validated participants’ actual desire for a sense of loyalty before testing each of the six services against three questions.

Customers rejected four services outright

The focus groups delivered two things the product team needed: which services weren’t wanted at all, and a priority ranking for the ones that were.

A co-design workshop turned findings into a validated, prioritised list

Following the focus groups, we ran a workshop to share findings and jointly edit and prioritise the service list.

• Purpose: Discuss findings, and edit and prioritise the proposed services
• Goal: A revised list balancing desirability, feasibility, and viability
• Method: Converge—review, decide, prioritise

By validating the proposed services with customers, and bringing the product team along on the research journey rather than presenting findings cold, we saved the business significant time and cost on initiatives that looked exciting on paper but customers didn’t want.