Context

Stakeholders were asking for a marketplace for Smartsheet users to buy and sell different solutions. I used a collection of qualitative methods to develop and test the concept in order to learned about customers needs, wants, and behaviors.

Approach

• I co-facilitated an Internal Stakeholder Workshop with 12 Smartsheet team members to define and align on marketplace.

• I conducted in-depth interviews with 3 activities to answer research questions by:

  • Having people read and highlight content on our announcement doc they found confusing or valuable.

  • Sharing wireframes to test to get feedback on their assumptions and expectations.

  • Conducting a ‘terminology exercise’ as it pertains to terms that may not be widely used or understood outside of Smartsheet.

Learnings

1. The stakeholder workshop resulted in a common vision. This was used as our single source of truth going forward. It contributed to developing the MVP concept.

2. Announcement doc led to us learning

   • What specific elements customers value

   • How the concept emotionally resonated with them

   • What we left out

   • What was specifically clear and unclear

3. The terminology activity led to learning where customers struggle to define or differentiate between terms we use in our organization.

4. Getting feedback with the wireframes led to us learning how they would expect to find, interact, and browse content.