Overview
This case study is a fascinating exploration of the challenges faced by Vicast, and how they overcame them by conducting user research in three different countries, distilling their brand, and adopting Agile practices. By prioritizing user representation and creating a foundational design system, Vicast was able to develop a robust brand ecosystem and lay the groundwork for its future product offerings. Through these efforts, Vicast addressed its immediate challenges and positioned itself for long-term success. I hope you find this case study as engaging and inspiring as we did!
Project Summary
Timeframe: Scoped as a nine-month project.
Team: 1 Design Lead (myself), 1 UX Researcher, 2 UX designers, and 3 Visual designers.
The project included a project manager and delivery staff that would handle client-side relationships.
Vicast Brand Context
Vicast is a Brazilian company owned by Hispanica Móvil, a Mexican telecommunications company that has been serving the Latin American sector since 2003. Hispanica Móvil has over 100,000 employees and millions of customers across Central and South America, making it a true market juggernaut. Vicast has recently begun shifting its services towards over-the-top offerings and as a result, its product development needs have steadily increased.
The Beginning
Vicast's brand expression varies by country due to international expansion through mergers and acquisitions. This has resulted in inconsistent brand experiences across products and touchpoints, creating challenges for the company. Stakeholders recognize the need for a unified customer-centric experience across all countries, similar to other tech giants, to ensure Vicast's success.
Examples of differences in a landing page from country to country (Clockwise from top left: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina)
Call to Adventure
The collaboration between Vicast's upper management and Wizeline was driven by a common goal: to create a more connected brand experience that would enable Vicast to build better products for its customers. To achieve this objective, the focus was on redesigning the main portal that would be delivered to fifteen countries in Latin America. Additionally, a proof of concept was required for Vicast's four main over-the-top services, which included video and music streaming, cloud storage, and an e-commerce platform. With such an ambitious project at hand, the teams were determined to work together closely to deliver an outstanding user experience for Vicast's customers. The results of this collaboration were truly impressive and are a testament to the power of effective collaboration and teamwork.
We started off with a couple of workshops to have a better understanding of the products and their business goals as well as the challenges they were facing.
We ran a Brand Distillation workshop with key stakeholders to have a better understanding of the brand's positioning.
Seeing Through Their Eyes: Understanding Vicast's Needs from Within
To understand Vicast's needs, we conducted stakeholder interviews in each of the 15 countries where Vicast operates, tapping into the expertise of individuals in Sales, Marketing, Digital, and Product. We gained insight into their specific needs, goals, and interactions with other teams, uncovering challenges such as varied brand experiences and a lack of data. As we delved deeper, we realized a redesign of Vicast's digital channels would require a shift in their overall service mindset, culture, and practices, leading us to expand our research approach to include traditional touchpoints. With a comprehensive understanding of Vicast's needs and vision, our next mission was to understand the stories of the final users.
After interviewing a series of key stakeholders spread over four countries, we could map out the business goals and challenges across the different regions.
We were able to identify three proto-personas we would later validate through research.
Absence of User-Centered Approach: A Major Challenge for Vicast's Brand Ecosystem
Vicast aimed to provide a user-centered experience across multiple channels, but our discovery phase showed that previous user research was inadequate. To address this, we gathered qualitative and quantitative data, prioritizing the impact on user experience. Our methodology included 1:1 interviews and contextual inquiries, observing user habits/motivations, goals/pain points, and mapping their experience. Interviews took place in Latin American countries based on client segmentation. Qualitative research included team sessions with local stakeholders. We asked users a range of questions, gaining a holistic understanding of their needs/motivations. We designed tailored tasks and identified usability issues and unmet needs, shaping the next phase of the project.
Our team of 1 Design Lead (myself), 1 UX researcher, 1 UX designer, and 1 Visual designer got to travel for three weeks to three countries in LATAM (Colombia, Peru & Chile) to engage in contextual inquiries with actual users
We interviewed 6 people per user personas; a mix of lab and contextual inquiries were used as a research methodology.
Insights were then processed to create our validated personas journeys.
Our team got to work on user flows that would at a later stage go into design production
Overcoming Corporate Bureaucracy: The Wizeline Design Team's Journey
Bureaucratic practices are common in large corporations like Vicast, often slowing down productivity. The Wizeline Design team recognized an opportunity to introduce agile project management by breaking the nine-month timeline into short sprints with clear deliverables that would quickly pass through the bureaucratic approval process.
To ensure the project's success, adhering to the timeline was critical. The team displayed discipline by completing each stage within the allocated timeframe, showcasing their findings and proposals to the company's most important hierarchies at various stages of the project. This validation ensured that the team's provided value was recognized and kept the project moving forward despite corporate bureaucracy.
Birth of a design system
The team conducted a brand audit of Vicast's digital library, revealing inconsistencies across touchpoints due to a lack of clear design guidelines for digital products. To address this, Wizeline's proposal for a new design for the corporate site and key products, emphasizes the need for a system to produce a coherent ecosystem of digital products. Insights from the User Research phase informed design decisions.
The design team created the Vicast Atlas Design System, a foundational organism for product development at Vicast, which follows an atomic design approach to meet the requirements of designing in a multiple-device era.
It was also a true milestone for the design unit since the main stakeholders at Vicast finally got a full view of how to achieve the brand cohesion they were after and helped fast-track the approvals process within the organizational hierarchies all the way up to key board members at Hispanica Movil (the parent Company for Vicast).
After distilling the brand, it was clear what elements we needed to begin creating the design system, or as we called it Atlas Design System. The one shown here is the light version.
One of the insights revealed during research was the need for the users to switch to dark themes on will, see Atlas was also built to have both light and dark themes.
A closer look at how the system dictates all instances of buttons. Atlas was created in Figma
Real-time Collaborations for a Pandemic Age
The Design Team suggested using Figma as the primary tool for designing and prototyping, given the project's scope. Figma's real-time collaboration capabilities were critical in creating a dynamic design system that accurately conveyed the brand's attributes across various interface languages. By adopting Figma, the team gained the flexibility to make multiple design explorations and iterations, working closely with stakeholders to refine the system.
An example of the main Vicast Portal for all regions that would only vary in content but not design.
Atlas Design System applied to one of their file storage products.
Atlas Design System applied to one of their music streaming services across all regions.
Project Outcomes
The project concluded in July 2020, limiting the availability of long-term metrics to measure the impact of the proposal. However, through the User Research phase, we identified critical points and user journeys, linking them to brand perceptions. Usability problems were identified and prioritized using Success Rates and Single Ease Questions. Behavioral variables allowed for consistent User Persona identification across countries, each with specific needs and pain points. The User Research phase was supplemented by quantitative methods, such as Surveys and Card Sorting. Need statements were formulated, followed by ideation and 1-2 user flows per User Persona, from low to high-fidelity prototyping, resulting in interactive prototypes reflecting the new branding and experience attributes collected.
A fully fleshed out design system (Vicast Atlas) headed to production and implementation immediately by countries like Brazil and Chile that are due to launch new products in Q3 2020.