IBM Partnerworld

Using Hotjar, we have access into online heatmaps to gain insight and track user activity on the member home page. There are three different Hotjar heatmaps used for testing and observations:

• Click and tap heatmaps: Shows where visitors click their cursor on desktop devices and where visitors tap their finger on mobile/tablet devices.
• Move heatmaps: Shows where visitors move their mouse on the screen—providing a very good indication of where the visitor is looking on the page.
• Scroll heatmaps: Shows you the visitor scroll position on a page—including the exact percentage of visitors that see a specific vertical position.

Gathering information from these types of heatmaps can help uncover users’ preferences, behavior patterns and how they interact with feature callouts. Heatmapping can also help determine whether users find the interface simple enough to use and offer insight into which elements they might encounter or prioritize on each screen.

Using Hotjar, we added a poll question to the IBM PartnerWorld member homepage and asked users what they would like to see added to the page.

Given the nature of the PartnerWorld Leadership Conference, the participants were primarily executives and business leaders. Many of the participants also have been partners for over 10 years. To gain a more holistic view of partner’s needs, we implemented Hotjar responses within our findings.

With limited time between sessions, we did a combination of individual and contextual interviews.

Individual Interviews

In individual interviews, an interviewer speaks with a single user for 5 to 30 minutes. Individual interviews allow interviewers to probe the user’s attitudes, beliefs, desires and experiences to get a deeper understanding of the user.

Contextual Interviews

In a contextual interview, an interviewer watches and listens to user interactions. To gain a better understanding of what a user is doing or thinking, the interviewer may ask questions as the user navigates the site. The results are usually qualitative and observational, rather than quantitative and measured. For example, we observed partners as they logged into the console, navigated the Go pages to certifications, and searched through pages.

We also assisted with the open card sorting exercises.

The objective for the open card sort was to allow partners to classify cards containing different aspects of PartnerWorld and name their groupings. The data collected from this exercise will help intuitively enhance the PartnerWorld site navigation.

The goal of our product roadmap is to articulate the PartnerWorld program levels in a way that’s understood by everyone. It was critical to talk to everyone across the teams and make sure everyone was aligned on the best way to present this information.

A pyramid was conceived to show how partners progress through the capability requirements, while displaying the multiple paths that partners can take. The power of this level of information is that more people can easily understand it instead of looking at a laundry list of features. This view begins to tell a clear story. Achievements are attributed to higher levels, with fewer necessary achievements further up the pyramid. 

Existing challenges:

• Show Business Partners how to take action to the next level, and understand the gaps between each
• Need to update the Alerts section to help partners know what’s expiring / what they’ve achieved

JIRA backlog requests:

• UI
  – Separate Deployments and Services from Solutions, and eventually incorporate Badges
  – Separate Badges from Certification includingseparate buckets for Specialist and Expert
  – Expand the Multi-national aggregation to include competencies and CSAT surveys across CEIDs
• Competency
  – For each competency, show the gap from achieved Specialist to Expert level
• Revenue
  – Show revenue contribution for each competency
• Alerts
  – Progress to Competency achieved
  – New Competencies announced

Current console

This section currently displays status and static text updates

Proposed updates

• Include more actionable alerts and notifications
  Examples:
  – Program Level Achievement Alert
  – Competency Achievement Alert
  – New competency available
  – Upcoming expirations
• Improve clarity of a partner’s current status and the different kinds of levels (World Wide Marketing vs Achieved, etc)
• Explore including My PartnerWorld access

Current console

Registered and Silver have the same layout while Gold and Platinum have the same layout.

Proposed updates

This would be the top priority to address for the UI. The goal is to have a more seamless transition to understand how to achieve the next level. Instead of tabbing between levels, the goal would be to flip the X and Y axis to show business partners where they’re tracking between levels and achievements.

Current console

The competency section currently has unclear tracking for expert versus specialist. Business partners are also currently unable to select competencies to track towards.

Proposed updates

• Explore overall layout of this section so it doesn’t feel like a completely different section on the same page.
• Show the gap between expert and specialist
• Provide partners with the ability to add or disable competencies
• Enhance progress bars
• Improve display of competencies that are In Progress vs. Achieved

Current console

The resource section only contains Program Guide and Go Pages.

Proposed updates

Explore including more tailored links to program help in this section (possibly mirroring what we are doing on the member home page).

Rapid blocking diagram that depicts information grouping by lane.

Note: Some icons you’ll see throughout

Wireframes were created to show Business Partners how to take action to the next level, and understand the gaps between each. The areas of enhancement include:

Current status

• Program Level, CEID Selector and WW Marketing Level have been reorganized for better usability
• Alerts have been added

Program progress

• Capabilities, Sales Success, Client Satisfaction and Client References have been organized in a linear design to show a quick snapshot of progress
• What’s needed to reach the next level has been incorporated so BPs can easily take action

Competency details

• This has been moved to a separate tab so BPs can more easily see Achieved and In Progress Competencies
• Ability to add and disable competencies
• Displays the gap between Specialist and Expert level competencies • Competency details (drill down)
• Sales success breakdown includes the multiplier

Resources/help

• Will be updated based on the outcome of our discussion