The Syniti Knowledge Platform
Company
Syniti
Year
2022
Skills
Innovation
Innovation
Innovation
Design Leadership
Design Leadership
Design Leadership
User Research
User Research
User Research
Introduction
Syniti provides data migration, data quality, and master data management solutions for Global 2000 companies. It considers itself a “software-led services organization.”
Its main software platform is nearly 20 years old and built up over time into a powerful system with an incredibly steep learning curve.
Syniti’s wanted to modernize this existing platform and take it to the cloud — as the Syniti Knowledge Platform (SKP) — with four product design goals:
Grounded in user research
Looked “modern”
Focused more on a “credit card” model than a “consulting engagement” model, i.e. customers could buy and onboard themselves rather than engaging a services team to set it up for them
Included UX best practices around information architecture, HCI, UI design, and scalability with a large and shifting set of user personas
I was hired in 2018 to build a UX team and bring design process to Syniti.
Syniti provides data migration, data quality, and master data management solutions for Global 2000 companies. It considers itself a “software-led services organization.”
Its main software platform is nearly 20 years old and built up over time into a powerful system with an incredibly steep learning curve.
Syniti’s wanted to modernize this existing platform and take it to the cloud — as the Syniti Knowledge Platform (SKP) — with four product design goals:
Grounded in user research
Looked “modern”
Focused more on a “credit card” model than a “consulting engagement” model, i.e. customers could buy and onboard themselves rather than engaging a services team to set it up for them
Included UX best practices around information architecture, HCI, UI design, and scalability with a large and shifting set of user personas
I was hired in 2018 to build a UX team and bring design process to Syniti.
Syniti provides data migration, data quality, and master data management solutions for Global 2000 companies. It considers itself a “software-led services organization.”
Its main software platform is nearly 20 years old and built up over time into a powerful system with an incredibly steep learning curve.
Syniti’s wanted to modernize this existing platform and take it to the cloud — as the Syniti Knowledge Platform (SKP) — with four product design goals:
Grounded in user research
Looked “modern”
Focused more on a “credit card” model than a “consulting engagement” model, i.e. customers could buy and onboard themselves rather than engaging a services team to set it up for them
Included UX best practices around information architecture, HCI, UI design, and scalability with a large and shifting set of user personas
I was hired in 2018 to build a UX team and bring design process to Syniti.
Process
Process
First, I had to gather a team. Of top of our own designers, product managers, and front-end developers (design is a team sport, after all), we hired a design agency to facilitate the discovery process and help the dev team get up to speed on the bones of a design system.
User Research
Coming in, we had these existing research artifacts:
User contextual inquiries of data orgs and personas built from this work
Interviews and feedback from “angry customer” design engagements that highlighted major pain points and helped better define the day-to-day of users
Work flows gathered from on-site contextual inquiry with customers
Post-mortems from previous abandoned attempts
We used the existing data to build the “big 5” customer personas who directly engage with our data solutions. We also created secondary personas for consultants (who may build the system based on best practices) and for people who use the information outside of the main system (e.g. executive slide decks).
The agency ran a multi-day workshop to align product, design, and engineering so that my design team (who had direct customer engagement) could engage in the workshops instead of running them. My team generated inputs for the agency and provided flows and known research.
As the design agency made the initial prototype, I attached a designer to each developer so they could “pair-design” the solution. I ran weekly feedback sessions with stakeholders, product managers, and rest of the design team. The product team (with the design team) did a roadshow with select customers for business feedback. Meanwhile, another designer ran quick-hit user testing sessions with internal users (i.e. consultants) for feedback to the design-developer pairs.
This initial prototype set the groundwork not just for the product vision and feature set, it also helped me get the engineering leadership onboard with co-creating a design system with my team.
Information Architecture
Sometimes, the manager has to do the design work because they have skills the rest of the team doesn't. In this case, I put my IA skills to use.
I set three outcomes; the new unified platform should:
Have shared functionality
Have shared navigation
Rely on the knowledge graph of business assets as the data underpinning the platform
First, I had to gather a team. Of top of our own designers, product managers, and front-end developers (design is a team sport, after all), we hired a design agency to facilitate the discovery process and help the dev team get up to speed on the bones of a design system.
User Research
Coming in, we had these existing research artifacts:
User contextual inquiries of data orgs and personas built from this work
Interviews and feedback from “angry customer” design engagements that highlighted major pain points and helped better define the day-to-day of users
Work flows gathered from on-site contextual inquiry with customers
Post-mortems from previous abandoned attempts
We used the existing data to build the “big 5” customer personas who directly engage with our data solutions. We also created secondary personas for consultants (who may build the system based on best practices) and for people who use the information outside of the main system (e.g. executive slide decks).
The agency ran a multi-day workshop to align product, design, and engineering so that my design team (who had direct customer engagement) could engage in the workshops instead of running them. My team generated inputs for the agency and provided flows and known research.
As the design agency made the initial prototype, I attached a designer to each developer so they could “pair-design” the solution. I ran weekly feedback sessions with stakeholders, product managers, and rest of the design team. The product team (with the design team) did a roadshow with select customers for business feedback. Meanwhile, another designer ran quick-hit user testing sessions with internal users (i.e. consultants) for feedback to the design-developer pairs.
This initial prototype set the groundwork not just for the product vision and feature set, it also helped me get the engineering leadership onboard with co-creating a design system with my team.
Information Architecture
Sometimes, the manager has to do the design work because they have skills the rest of the team doesn't. In this case, I put my IA skills to use.
I set three outcomes; the new unified platform should:
Have shared functionality
Have shared navigation
Rely on the knowledge graph of business assets as the data underpinning the platform
First, I had to gather a team. Of top of our own designers, product managers, and front-end developers (design is a team sport, after all), we hired a design agency to facilitate the discovery process and help the dev team get up to speed on the bones of a design system.
User Research
Coming in, we had these existing research artifacts:
User contextual inquiries of data orgs and personas built from this work
Interviews and feedback from “angry customer” design engagements that highlighted major pain points and helped better define the day-to-day of users
Work flows gathered from on-site contextual inquiry with customers
Post-mortems from previous abandoned attempts
We used the existing data to build the “big 5” customer personas who directly engage with our data solutions. We also created secondary personas for consultants (who may build the system based on best practices) and for people who use the information outside of the main system (e.g. executive slide decks).
The agency ran a multi-day workshop to align product, design, and engineering so that my design team (who had direct customer engagement) could engage in the workshops instead of running them. My team generated inputs for the agency and provided flows and known research.
As the design agency made the initial prototype, I attached a designer to each developer so they could “pair-design” the solution. I ran weekly feedback sessions with stakeholders, product managers, and rest of the design team. The product team (with the design team) did a roadshow with select customers for business feedback. Meanwhile, another designer ran quick-hit user testing sessions with internal users (i.e. consultants) for feedback to the design-developer pairs.
This initial prototype set the groundwork not just for the product vision and feature set, it also helped me get the engineering leadership onboard with co-creating a design system with my team.
Information Architecture
Sometimes, the manager has to do the design work because they have skills the rest of the team doesn't. In this case, I put my IA skills to use.
I set three outcomes; the new unified platform should:
Have shared functionality
Have shared navigation
Rely on the knowledge graph of business assets as the data underpinning the platform
Challenges and Outcomes
Challenges and Outcomes
Syniti sees itself as a “software-led services company.” Culturally, though, it is a services company, one that uses selling motions for service engagements and highly values consultants and best practices.
Thus, the sales team struggled with selling the vision, while consultants rebelled against customer persona focused software.
In response to this:
I worked directly with Sales to help create their talk tracks and adjusted the product as we went to maximize selling flows (while pushing back on “sales-led design.”)
I worked with product and engineering leadership to tab “best practice” consulting leads as additional stakeholders and subject matter experts. The design team was expected to review ongoing design with them on a regular cadence (1x/2wks) and to glean consultant feedback for usable and actionable ideas for the next iteration cycle.
A cultural problem of services companies is solutioneering, where consultants build solutions with little consideration of the larger problems. Here I had to constantly coach the team to turn around the conversation and talk about the problem first. Meanwhile I monitored their work to spot any signs of “transactional design” — just-in-time tactical work that loses the broader design strategy.
Outcomes
What started with a basic business glossary prototype when I joined in 2018 booked $3M in the quarter it was released alongside a $30M sales pipeline. The new platform also helped Syniti book 50% more revenue in consulting services. Beta customers were generally happy with the product and found the new experience “much easier to use” than the previous mishmash of applications and UIs.
Syniti sees itself as a “software-led services company.” Culturally, though, it is a services company, one that uses selling motions for service engagements and highly values consultants and best practices.
Thus, the sales team struggled with selling the vision, while consultants rebelled against customer persona focused software.
In response to this:
I worked directly with Sales to help create their talk tracks and adjusted the product as we went to maximize selling flows (while pushing back on “sales-led design.”)
I worked with product and engineering leadership to tab “best practice” consulting leads as additional stakeholders and subject matter experts. The design team was expected to review ongoing design with them on a regular cadence (1x/2wks) and to glean consultant feedback for usable and actionable ideas for the next iteration cycle.
A cultural problem of services companies is solutioneering, where consultants build solutions with little consideration of the larger problems. Here I had to constantly coach the team to turn around the conversation and talk about the problem first. Meanwhile I monitored their work to spot any signs of “transactional design” — just-in-time tactical work that loses the broader design strategy.
Outcomes
What started with a basic business glossary prototype when I joined in 2018 booked $3M in the quarter it was released alongside a $30M sales pipeline. The new platform also helped Syniti book 50% more revenue in consulting services. Beta customers were generally happy with the product and found the new experience “much easier to use” than the previous mishmash of applications and UIs.
Syniti sees itself as a “software-led services company.” Culturally, though, it is a services company, one that uses selling motions for service engagements and highly values consultants and best practices.
Thus, the sales team struggled with selling the vision, while consultants rebelled against customer persona focused software.
In response to this:
I worked directly with Sales to help create their talk tracks and adjusted the product as we went to maximize selling flows (while pushing back on “sales-led design.”)
I worked with product and engineering leadership to tab “best practice” consulting leads as additional stakeholders and subject matter experts. The design team was expected to review ongoing design with them on a regular cadence (1x/2wks) and to glean consultant feedback for usable and actionable ideas for the next iteration cycle.
A cultural problem of services companies is solutioneering, where consultants build solutions with little consideration of the larger problems. Here I had to constantly coach the team to turn around the conversation and talk about the problem first. Meanwhile I monitored their work to spot any signs of “transactional design” — just-in-time tactical work that loses the broader design strategy.
Outcomes
What started with a basic business glossary prototype when I joined in 2018 booked $3M in the quarter it was released alongside a $30M sales pipeline. The new platform also helped Syniti book 50% more revenue in consulting services. Beta customers were generally happy with the product and found the new experience “much easier to use” than the previous mishmash of applications and UIs.