EX marks the spot

Large, complex organisations have had to change the way they communicate to maintain current, contextual and consistent messaging. Usability and user experience have become defining factors for business survival and to flourish, they need to shift their focus to the users right under their noses; their employees.

From apps to digital workspaces, LiveTiles creates workplace tech that links employees to everything they need to get their job done.

LiveTiles’ platform Reach allows companies to communicate with distributed workforces through targeted messaging, notifications, chat and articles. And with custom plugins for app integrations of all kinds, employees can access the internal communications they need on the tools they actually use.

With fit-for-purpose tech already fulfilling the needs of businesses around the world, LiveTiles set the goal to be a globally-recognised EX leader by 2024. They partnered with us to undertake a robust discovery phase and create a roadmap to achieve this ambitious milestone.

Reach had great “product/market fit”: it was in an almost limitless market and it had already been proven that people would pay for it. The next step was to dive deep into the product offering to reaffirm what current users needed right now and uncover how it could evolve to meet the needs of customers in the future.

While their intentions were solid, LiveTiles lacked the internal capabilities to meet the demands of a discovery phase of this scale. Working closely with us, they were able to form a nimble UX team, run user interviews and workshops, and audit the current platform for hidden treasure (a.k.a. insights).

To frame our research, and help LiveTiles understand the roadblocks to meeting their strategic goals, we adopted a multi-faceted approach. First, we focused on understanding how existing Reach users navigate the product day-to-day. Then, we looked into how the first-timers, the people key to the Reach’s growth, might use the product too. We achieved this by evaluating the product through a best-practice lens: combining interviews, quantitative surveys, usability testing, and competitive analysis.

With participants from across the Asia/Pacific, US and European regions, we were able to get a clear snapshot of common usability issues for customers, middle and end-users alike. We uncovered key opportunities areas for LiveTiles to channel their energies and achieve growth, giving Reach a springboard for their future success.

Through our discovery phase, we uncovered areas for Reach to own as a category differentiator; giving them just the push they needed to embark on their journey towards EX leadership.

We recommended that the business continues to improve their employee experience indicators, with a consistent investment in UX. All while being laser focused on taking advantage of the gaps in the EX market we identified during our research.

On the back of this research, we set out to understand the competitive landscape and work with LiveTiles to develop a product strategy that was focused on driving user acquisition, retention, and engagement.

The holy trinity of product growth.

This strategy was widely socialised within the business, fostering buy-in across all business units and a shared passion for the north star. We worked alongside LiveTiles' development team to ensure that the strategy was translated into a market-leading product. We provided clear product requirements and a product roadmap to keep the cross-functional team aligned.

Our design team developed visual design concepts, before working in an iterative Lean UX approach to ideate, prototype, and test the designs every sprint with real users to ensure they were validated and reduced waste in development.

With a watertight product strategy focused on its users, a team roadmap to keep its fleet aligned, and a consolidated design system for their existing suite; LiveTiles have their sights set on delivering on their goals of world dominance, despite market headwinds, category disruptors and rough seas.