A global company released new SSO that were critical for their future products. However, SSO adoption was lower than expected
Research Question
What was causing the low adoption?
Approach
To gather specific details about the user experience, I conducted 23 global 1:1 user interviews with two key user types: buyers (both current and prospective) and end users (both current and prospective).
Feedback from the interviews indicated potential regional differences and other interesting possibilities. To delve deeper into these hypotheses, I analyzed usage data and conducted a statistical analysis.
Developed detailed case studies in response to the company's request to better understand how different clients are utilizing the company's hardware and software products.
Impact
This research was challenging because the technology behind the service was nuanced with different variations. However, most users didn’t recognize these differences and thought the variations were the same. To work around this issue, I had to ask very specific step-by-step questions on how the user interacted with the technology to determine which variation they used. This challenge provided valuable insights to the company and didn’t stop us from gathering insights.
The research revealed 10+ distinct factors that could potentially impact adoption. To make it easier to respond to the research, I categorized the findings into 3 categories:
Factors mostly in the company’s control
Factors semi in the company’s control
Factors not in the company’s control
The company found my insights valuable and promptly implemented changes in response to the findings. While the research was initially requested by a specific team within the company, the findings were deemed universally relevant, leading to a request for a presentation to the broader organization.
"This was a really good interview. Whoever you're working for should be happy they have you."
- User feedback on our principal researcher