AWS ProHelp
Defined the complete user experience for a brand new on-demand, packaged expert help service from initial concept through private preview.
Summary
As the sole product designer for this brand new initiative in AWS Modernization org, I worked with a lean team with 1 product manager and 1 developer manager to bring the product through the idea phase to preview in 2023. I was responsible for defining UX strategy, user stories, research, and interaction design while driving cross-functional alignment through the entire product lifecycle.
This case study focuses on the customer experience and problem that we are solving.
Context
AWS migration service helps enterprise customers to bring on-prem servers to AWS cloud. Customers struggle with migration projects due to several reasons:
- Companies usually don't have the expert on hand in-house for migration projects—these require a set of specific skills, familiar with AWS services and legacy environment, and businesses usually are not incentivized to hire or train for these less frequently utilized skills
- AWS services are hard to learn and navigate without sufficient training in best practices, setups, and configurations
- Each migration is different and has unique challenges—when there's a playbook, it's hard to tailor it to your unique scenarios without experience in real migration projects
To help customers accelerate their migration projects, the migration organization proposed a migration operation suite comprising three key components—core service, project help, and MITS tracking. ProHelp as a service addresses one of the top challenges in the migration domain: on-demand access to expert help.
Problem
Migration customers have a hard time finding the specific technical expert they need to help unblock them timely.
Migration project team needs highly specific but critical skills from technical/domain expertise while doing their migration project to help unblock them in their migration project timely. They need domain knowledge experts who possess unique and deep knowledge about a specific area in migration (e.g., Gov Cloud, security and networking configuration) or an AWS service. But these experts are hard to find. There are many available expert help services, but customers either are not aware of these options, or these expert help options do not meet their needs, or they had to wait for a long time to request the help from account manager.
Competitive Analysis
What unique value can we provide to migration customers aside from the AWS help services that they already have access to today?
To bridge the gap for customers in help experience, I conducted research to better understand the context and challenges in providing expert help in AWS, pain points, and opportunities. This revealed an opportunity for ProHelp to focus on packaged, clearly scoped small projects with a fast service speed.
User Interviews
Why doesn't the current help meet migration customer needs?
With limited access to external customers, I interviewed 10 server migration practitioners who closely work with customers in migration projects—including AWS Solutions Architects, Account Managers, and AWS ProServe Consultants—to understand the current help journey's gaps and customers' unmet needs.
Pain Points
I captured the current experience and pain points in the form of journey maps and discussed with PM on the areas we'd focus on solving. Through user interviews, I identified critical pain points in the current expert help experience:
- Long turnaround time when requesting subject matter expertise
- Lack of understanding of the expert's specialty by looking at their title—difference and nuances of skills
- No timely response from experts
- Long back and forth to clarify scope and requirements, review proposals
- Even when experts are found, the long approval and procurement process is needed for existing services like ProServe and Partners
Design Opportunity
Bring expert help to the customer in context of their current task and goal.
There's an opportunity to make the discovery process more intuitive by recommending help in context of user's current task, empower them through a simple, direct self-service request process, and make the collaboration process more transparent. For V1 of the service, we are limited to only providing free packages.
- Discovery: Surface relevant help offerings in context to where user is at (console page)
- Align expectation: Emphasize expert's unique skill, experience, and past projects
- Help package delivery: Allow customer to schedule call on expert's calendar
- Closing, review and feedback: How to collect feedback, resolve dispute, and improve the service help offerings
- Service integration: Integrate with Migration Hub Journey—a guidance tool that team will use to track specific tasks, ingress in console where task doers will carry out tasks
Target User
Through user research, I defined two key personas for the ProHelp service:
Task Doer
Architect, Developers, SysAdmin
The person in charge of delivering assessment report with AWS Migration Hub service.
Goal: Finding expert help to conduct migration assessment on application.
Needs:
- Quickly locate the expert help specific to assessment
- Review credibility and skills—which AWS services domain and industry experience
- See timeline and availability
- Clear procurement process/price information
- Confidence and trust in quality of expert/their work
- How it would feel like working using this service
Migration Lead
Decision Makers, Project Managers
Planning and working on a migration journey to track their migration tasks.
Goal: Plan out migration journey and ensure each task has clear assignees to carry out tasks timely.
Needs:
- Find the right skillset for the task
- Ensure deployed or upcoming task has right people on it
Storyboard
I created storyboards to map the end-to-end user journey from discovery to engagement with expert help. Along with this document, we used it to validate the service value proposition with internal stakeholders—Migration Services, Startup team, ProServe team, and UX team. This generated interest about the initiative and became the starting point for many cross-team conversations about potential packages they could provide on the platform.
Service Integration
We identified 2 initial service integration points to reach customers at the right moment in their journey, as they are most impactful in bringing timely help. Other ingress points that were considered including AWS Documentation, Marketplace, and re:Post forum but deprioritized as they're not a direct path users will encounter throughout their task.
MigOps Integration
MigOps is a new service we are building outside of the AWS management console. In early migration journey, customers can do assessment and build business case without an AWS account. ProHelp will integrate with MigOps.
AWS Management Console
In AWS Management Console, based on contextual information we'll suggest ProHelp packages that help with user's current task based on several dimensions, i.e., which page customer is on. In the backend, packages will be categorized based on a couple dimensions.
The diagram below illustrates the end-to-end ProHelp UX flow across both integration points.
Design Iterations
Contextual Discovery
I explored multiple approaches for showing help contextually, including utilizing the AWS console help info panel, a floating bubble, ingress in search bar, and showing recommendations in empty states.
Decision
The final decision was to focus on incorporating the help panel, as it's natural for customers familiar with the AWS console to look there for tutorials and documentation.
- Access without interrupting the workflow
- Take quick actions
- Can benefit from being in the contextual environment
- Can be reused easily
Pitch to AWS Design System
Since this component is owned by the AWS Design System team across all AWS services, I pitched the design to work with them and get buy-in. I worked with design engineers on the central team and a visual designer to define the expert help logo and the interaction of introducing a new expert help concept to the help panel.
Discovery Flow
As a task doer, I can see packages available specifically for my current task so that I get relevant help.
Request Flow
As a task doer, I can propose an initial sync time during the request process to ensure timely start.
Payment Flow
As a task doer, I can review the work first before being charged for paid projects.
Marketplace Recommendation Flow
As a task doer, I can browse a central help package marketplace for additional package discovery.
Visual Design Exploration
I explored various visual design directions to create an engaging and professional experience for the ProHelp service.
Final result
What we built to address customer and expert needs.
Widget Discovery
By including the ProHelp service in the info panel—it's a natural place where customers look for help as the current info panel shows help information but not much hands-on help. This will help customers in the right mindset. Shows how it works and who can request.
Task Doer Discovery
Task doers can discover relevant help packages directly from their current task context.
Clearly Defined Help Package
Each help package clearly defines the scope, deliverables, and expert qualifications so customers know exactly what they're getting.
Requirements, FAQs and Reviews
Detailed package information organized into three tabs: Requirements, FAQs, and Review—giving customers all the context they need to make an informed decision.
Expert Profile
Displays timezone, skills, and AWS services expertise—giving customers confidence in selecting the right expert for their specific needs.
Request Details
Clear request flow with scope definition and timeline expectations.
Collaboration
Seamless collaboration workflow between customers and experts for project delivery.
Invite
Invite team members to collaborate on the project.
Payment
Streamlined payment process integrated with AWS billing.
Marketplace
A marketplace view to browse available expert packages and find additional discovery options.
Outcome & Learnings
Successfully brought the product from concept to private preview in 2023. The service addresses a critical gap in the AWS migration support ecosystem by providing fast, scoped, task-level expert assistance.
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