Enhancing Digital Experience at Square Enix
Establishing new specialisms by highlighting delivery gaps in product development, redefining Web Quality Assurance and broadening User Experience capability in the team.
Overview
I created a Digital Experience team, broadening the remit of the Web QA Team and later adding in design disciplines, to create a more user-centric "Centre of Excellence" for experience and quality.
The Challenge
The Web Quality Assurance team that I line-managed was all too often seen as an afterthought in the development process: labelled "The Last Line of Defence", they were often included too late in the process to instill quality considerations within the team. The company did not have a strong user testing culture at the time, specifically for digital web products, there was a lack of usability heuristics and UX consistency, along with no time between projects to effectivly measure product performance post-delivery.
The Approach
I took a three-pronged approach to redefining what the team should be to future-proof product development:
- A "shift left" approach to quality standards, rebranding and embedding who the team were, what they offered and how they should be included in the development lifecycle.
- Improving the test and measurement culture, such as creating hypotheses for feature changes, user testing specific features, A/B testing conversion funnel tweaks, and partnering with analytics specialists to produce outcome-driven data the team could use to consistently iterate and improve.
- Making the case to support team members to upskill in UX, creating specialised development paths, supporting training and certifications, and championing the inclusion of UX and accessibility considerations through the development workflow.
The Outcome
A new team was formed to cover this broader remit: Digital Experience. It was embedded earlier in all workflows, improving discovery processes and reducing accessibility defects by 25%, while reducing bugs in production ~30%, decreasing the chances of "building the wrong thing". Further to this, the team performed more A/B tests, invested in user testing with an external vendor, and improved conversion flows over time.