Circa 2012
The Opportunity
The Oktoberfest relaunch of xfinityTV.com was a monumental development effort that was under extreme deadline pressures to release on time. This inevitably lead to some hasty decision-making under duress, which resulted in underperforming metrics.
The Process
As a developer, imagine pulling off a huge effort – the last thing you want is to be told its flawed. To re-engage our partners, I hosted a roadshow that demonstrated our data-driven UX approach which won over the data-loving developers, making them my biggest champions for the necessary updates.
Success?
The updates helped to push those struggling metrics back to our definition of success. What easily could have turned into finger-pointing and blame-storming was instead a feel-good collaborative effort.
What made this project special?
One of my favorite stories because the design was the easy part. The success was actually dependent upon empathy for our developers, not our users. It meant being curious about what was important to them, and then communicating in a way that resonated with their outlook.
This project exemplified the notion that it is far easier to work with and through people than it is to work at the cost of others (despite the short-lived false satisfaction of blaming someone else for a problem). By being transparent about the metric gaps as well as how UX attempted to close them, it empowered the developers to brainstorm and contribute some enhancements as well.
What about me?
Activities performed
- Collaboration with other designers, research team, product management, engineers, and QA.
- Workshops and whiteboard sessions.
- Omnigraffle wireframes and user flows.
- Axure prototypes for testing.
- Photoshop and Fireworks for high-fidelity mockups.
Things I loved
I thrived being surrounded by such a talented, creative, and interesting group of people to work with. I am proud to admit that I wasn’t the smartest person in the room!
The constant drive to find the leading edge against competitors such as Apple and Google meant new ideas were required, not just welcome.
About the company
Comcast has over 100,000 employees, Comcast Interactive Media (now named Technology & Product) was essentially a studio of 200 within the larger company. CIM provided Comcast customers with compelling experiences via Comcast’s sites, apps, and set-top boxes.
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