CGI

Member Management Foundation Research Project | 4 months

Role: UX Researcher

UX Team: Senior UX designer, Product Designer

Tools: Figma | Ms Excel | Adobe Illustrator | Adobe photoshop

CGI - Management Foundation

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world. Their mission is to provide insights-driven and outcomes-based results to help accelerate the business growth for their clients.

Problem

HCx, the human centered design division of CGI was growing too fast and was looking to standardize the HCx practice including the member managers approach towards managing the career development of their direct reports.

Solution

A team of four UX researchers were given the opportunity to work on this management foundation research project. Our goal was to conduct a contextual inquiry study to identify and share insights on member management best practices for career development of members.

My Contribution

My role as a UX Researcher was to conduct the contextual inquiry with the team collect data and actionable insights to write recommendations for best practice.

  • UX methodology of contextual inquiry research to interview two of the seven directors, take notes in real time to collect data.

  • Organize data on FigJam to look for common patterns in data and groups the related data items in a affinity map.

  • Synthesize data to derive insights form affinity map.

  • Process the second level of insight generation.

  • Leverage on to the actionable insights to create a user journey map.

  • Highlight the research findings to write the recommendations of member career development best practices.

  • Data visualization to present the quantitative aspects from the UX research.

  • Prepare the stakeholder presentation.

Process

The team of four UX researchers conducted the contextual inquiry by interviewing seven directors from HCx division of CGI. We captured the notes in real time and organized them on a FigJam. The notes were arranged to look for pattern sin data and group the related data together in a an affinity map. The affinity map was leveraged to extract the first and second level insights. The actionable insights informed our decisions on generating personas and journey map. This led to the discovery of the major challenges that the managers face in members career development as well as the opportunities which informed the recommendations for best practice guide for managers.

Interview notes reorganized on FigJam Board

Affinity Map: Grouping of data to synthesize into findings, use findings to generate insights

Second level of insight generation

There were five distinct categories that were derived from the research

  • Documentation and Tracking

  • Time Management and Empowerment

  • Member Profiles

  • The Power of Community

  • Member Onboarding

  • Member Management Support System

Recommendations for Member Manager best practice.

Three major categories for writing recommendations for Member Manager best practice guide are below:-

  • Consistent and Accurate feedback

  • Member Empowerment

  • Building Strong Relationships

Interview Scripts and notes

Demographic data

Member Manager years of service comparison

Personas

Four persona types were as follows;-

  1. Visionary

  2. Steward

  3. Harmonizer

  4. Advocate

Unequal distribution of members among the member managers

The management foundation recommends each manager to have unto 15 members

Journey map

Through the journey Map that I created we were successful in identifying the challenges that the member managers were facing in different phases of member career development process. Goal setting, record keeping, progress tracking and gathering member performance feedback.

Recommendations for Member Manger Best Practice Guide

Through the journey Map that I created we were successful in identifying the challenges that the member managers were facing in different phases of member career development process. Goal setting, record keeping, progress tracking and gathering member performance feedback.

Conclusion

Our contextual inquiry research recommendations were a great starting point to think about automating the mundane tasks that managers have to do every week to perform their manager duties, like approving timesheets. Reducing the number of members each manger can manage to, 15 so that they have more time to support the members career development path by devoting time to one-on-one interactions and career guidance. Standardizing the process that mangers can follow to support the members on growth path at CGI and beyond. Create a vision and harmony, consistency, growth mindset and member empowerment at CGI.



Feedback

Feedback from UX Strategy Lead

I’ve truly enjoyed working with you during your time here.

I was very impressed with your willingness to jump into the Member Career Development research project with such gusto and interest. You brought energy and inquisitiveness and a high level of critical thinking to the effort that helped to keep the team engaged and drive truly interesting results. I know you were keen to gain additional skills in user research by utilizing Contextual Inquiry and Design Synthesis, and you did a wonderful job on this project!”

Feedback form a Team mate

It has been a pleasure working with you on the Member Career Development project. Your willingness to help and dedication to the proejct have significantly contributed to the success of this project. Your design inputs, specially for the presentation were excellent and you have the knack to draw insights from the findings. Your initiative to work on the journey map and recommendations accelerated the process to create the presentation which is greatly appreciated. You are a great team player and are an asset to any team.