Fieldforce 2 | Robots Made This

Fieldforce

Quite the user experience.

A bit of history.

Fieldforce utilizes proprietary software and technology to manage network deployment and operations.

My part in the Fieldforce story.

My time with Fieldforce was a bit of a whirlwind. Admittedly, part of the draw of being a part of this opportunity was to experience what life was really like working at a startup. I've always been fascinated with being a part of something at or near the beginning and I really wanted to see if it was possible to have work/life balance in that environment. I joined Fieldforce as the Director of UX/UI and Director of Marketing.

Tthe amount of work we were able to push out in less than 6 months was pretty impressive.

I was given the task of: (all tasks were completed)

Building a brand
Completely upgrading an existing platform
- style guide
- new user workflow
- new layout for desktop
- new mobile optimized for iPad
Redesign of the website
- design
- writing
Recruiting ads
- concept
- writing
- design
Pitch decks
Trade show
- booth graphics
- collateral
- swag

I was one also tasked with leading an international team. I was located within the United States, the remainder of the team that I managed was located in Pakistan.

This is what we created.

THE USER PART

One of the main advantages that Fieldforce had was an expertise in the market and direct access to our user base. Through quite a few meetings, I was able to develop personas, use cases and an extensive list of pain points that needed to be resolved with the new software release. Below is a small sampling of UX screens developed in user base interviews.

I worked hard to create a set of processes to get work completed efficiently. I utilized daily standups during times that worked for both me and my international team. We held weekly reviews with our user base to show product updates and get feedback. We applied feedback into future sprint cycles. We also held weekly internal reviews to go over our timelines. I created and managed Kanban boards within Jira to track use cases and utilized Confluence to create and maintain our style guide.

I know you don't want to see the 140+ screens that we created, so I'll share just a handful.

THE DEVELOPER PART

Every one of the 140+ screens built became bricks in the foundation of our style guide. Every opportunity I had, I would pull assets and drop them into confluence, every button choice, header, color, font, dropdown, icon, etc. became a layer and style to be followed. The extra work paid off as I had been able to establish a living style guide in an accessible location that became the backbone of all future screens and slides for Fieldforce.

You can see the output of this here on behance.

THE MARKETING... STUFF

Looks a bit overwhelming right?

This marketing concept that I developed was the centerpiece of our trade show display, standing 18 feet tall and almost 30 feet wide.

We developed an email campaign (pictured on the right) that we sent to our current and potential customer base 3 weeks before the show. On the morning the Mobile World Congress LA conference kicked off, we updated the website homepage with a new splash page to reflect the messaging of the trade show.

Analytics showed that halfway through the first day we were up over 400%, by the end of the show our web traffic was up over 1500%!

To help draw people into the booth, we had set up a giveaway of our large screen displays. One to be given away on the morning of the last day, the second at the end of that day. To enter the contest, people (leads) would submit a guess of how many devices were represented on the display.

We also had additional giveaways for people who took a selfie in front of the display with #areyouready and #fieldforce. We gave away small branded robots for those entries.

Success(ish).

Unfortunately, the success of the show really highlighted and pointed out the inefficiency of our website. Analytics showed that while traffic had a massive jump, over 90% of users would navigate one additional page in, and leave.

In essence, we lost them the minute they looked behind the curtain.

A new website design had just jumped to the top of the priority list. Below are screenshots of that effort.

A Missed opportunity.

While we were able to work really quickly and push out an entire new website in under 3 weeks, the momentum of traffic from the show had slowed considerably. While it is true that all of the marketing tasks were happening at the same time as the complete overhaul of the UX/UI for the app, I really wish that I would have found a way to prioritize the website redesign before the show. As I look back on this time, I see this as a regret.

MORE THAN JUST A JOB

The good news was that out of the show, we did hit a growth spurt as a company. I honed in on the "not just a job" vibe that really appealed to me and so many other people I knew to develop some social media ads for us.

I'd love to give you a follow up on how this campaign played out, but unfortunately this project came along towards the end of my time with Fieldforce.

THE ENDING

Working with Fieldforce and getting to explore what it would be like to work at a startup was a good choice. The job would have been difficult if it were only the Director of UX/UI or the Director of Marketing but as is the case with most startups, there were many hats that needed to be worn, and too few heads to wear them.

If I had a do-over, there are some things I would have done differently from a timing perspective but overall I'm happy with the end result and proud of how hard the team worked to accomplish so much in so little time.