Agent Desktop (Formerly Kepler)
The Challenge
ServiceMaster embarked on a significant expedition to transition customer data to cloud-based technologies, aiming to enable modern application development for brands like American Home Shield and Terminix. The initial "Kepler" iteration focused on centralizing customer data. The broader challenge was to integrate new web application technologies to create a modern call center application, thus improving the overall user and customer experience across all ServiceMaster brands. This complex terrain was a fragmented system, lacking a holistic view of the user experience, demanding a pioneering spirit to cultivate user-centered processes.
The Stewardship Model
This exploration, later named Agent Desktop, became a beacon, illuminating the path toward a modern web-based application built with micro-applications. As a blaze marker in establishing a user-centered approach, I collaborated closely with management, stakeholders, and the third-party design agency Simple Focus, conducting extensive interviews and observations within call centers and supporting business units. This direct engagement fostered deep empathy with call center agents. This trek became a springboard, leading to a more established Design Discovery and Design Thinking process, where user observations, interviews, and moderated paper prototype testing became accepted practices. Over the next year, numerous iterative mockups and prototypes were developed to visualize brand data and address complex problems across business units. I provided crucial support to front-end developers, guiding them in learning modern frameworks like Polymer and Angular, aligning our development with Google's Material Design. This resourcefulness allowed for rapid iteration of ideas and concepts using tools like Axure RP and Adobe XD. This period profoundly exemplified an intuitive resourcefulness and adaptability within a transforming enterprise.
The Impact
The Agent Desktop application ultimately became a pivotal landmark, leading directly to the development of other web applications, including Serv-A, ServDesk, and ServCenter. Critically, it contributed significantly to establishing the UX discipline at ServiceMaster. This foundational work created a precedent for collaborative problem-solving and helped cultivate recognition for the value of a comprehensive, interconnected approach to product development, enhancing both user and customer experiences by fostering a more human-centered approach.
- Role(s): Lead Interaction Designer / UX Designer, worked with management, stakeholders, and a third-party design agency, and aided front-end developers.
- Digital Tools: Web Application technologies, cloud-based technologies, Kepler (first iteration), Agent Desktop (renamed from Kepler), Angular, Polymer, Axure RP, Adobe XD. The project resulted in Serv-A, ServDesk, and ServCenter web applications.
UX Practices & Methods: Integrated web technologies for a modern UX, aimed to improve user and customer experience, conducted interviews and observations with call center agents and supporting business units to gain empathy, established Design Discovery and Design Thinking processes, utilized user observations, user interviews, moderated testing of paper prototypes, iterative mockups, and prototypes. Phillips also utilized Material Design guidelines for UX research and UI development.