Effective guidance for product adoption and ongoing usage, improving content findability by 28%.
Lead designer
First phase: 3 months
Second phase: 4 months
🚀 Launched
In-product help is a feature that provides contextual guidance directly within Juniper software applications. It includes various types of content, such as getting started guidelines, release notes, FAQs, and detailed instructions for common tasks. This feature is essential in helping users quickly get their products up and running and ensuring a pleasant user journey.
76% of the survey respondents had needed or anticipated needing in-product help.
50% of the in-product help users used it at least once a week.
In-product help users encountered the most difficulty in locating the desired content, which had a negative impact on overall satisfaction.
Increase customer satisfaction, customer retention, and task completion rate.
Create intuitive pathways with effective search and browse functionalities to minimize customers' effort.
I facilitated interviews with 10 customers to test the design and gather direct feedback. The results demonstrate that the design has successfully achieved the project goals. In particular, customers appreciated its user-friendly navigation, findability, and intuitive nature when using specific features within the panel.
To prioritize the usability issues, I reviewed the customer survey results and identified design milestones for each phase. It became apparent that the Quick Help section was the primary destination for customers seeking in-product help, and it contained the most content. As a result, I decided to start with improving Quick Help.
I mapped out the user flow of accessing a topic by entering a search query and navigating from the topic list. Since many topics have long titles, I discussed this with engineers and proposed incorporating an auto-suggestion feature for search. This enhancement would enable customers to see suggested titles as they type their queries.
Decision: Add auto-suggestion to increase search efficiency in Quick Help.
The components and layout were refreshed in accordance with the new design system. I worked with UX Researchers to conduct testing with 6 customers.
The results indicated that the search functionality and expand feature helped customers find the requested content during the usability study.
Participants were uncertain how to navigate back to the previous state from a topic page. The hamburger menu, which directs users to the topic list, was not intuitive enough. Additionally, participants suggested including an "expand all" option in the topic list for a quick understanding of the content hierarchy.
Based on the findings from phase 1, I made the following changes:
🔧 Implement breadcrumbs and a back button.
🔧 Remove the hamburger menu and display the topic list upfront. Add an "expand all" option in the topic list.
Together with the project manager, we then defined requirements for phase 2, which focused on a comprehensive redesign of the help panel.
🔧 Provide more details about different types of content on the welcome page.
🔧 Enhance the value of in-product help by incorporating new features, beginning with a feedback widget.
The decision to develop a feedback widget first was driven by the engineering and business benefits. The engineering team could leverage the existing function implemented on Juniper's website, and this would enable data analysis for design improvements in the future.
I brainstormed a few options for the welcome page and the new feature. After that, I presented the ideas to Sales Engineers and finalized the design with their input. For instance, the "start the first task" button was removed from the welcome page since it's not applicable for updates beyond day zero. In the feedback process, a thumbs-down icon was not ideal due to negative associations.
Decision: Generic welcome page and use of a neutral term in the feedback widget.
There are several opportunities, both identified internally and externally, to further iterate the in-product help experience.
🔖 In the feedback feature, provide links to relevant topics if customers don't find the current page helpful.
🔎 Make the search functionality available throughout the help panel, so customers can search for keywords across all types of content.
🔦 Add guided tours in the getting started guidelines, which will take customers to the correct place in the application to proceed.