(Overview) ISM: Scaling Survey Insights for Educational Organizations

Business Context & Design Challenge:

Providing research-based insights to educational institutions around the world, ISM’s Survey Production team had a long track record of success. However, the group also suffered from regular work overload, a higher than usual staff turnover rate, and lost revenue due to workflows that were difficult to scale.

I was asked by the Executive Leadership team to ideate, recommend, and implement ways to take this profitable department and scale it for increased user impact and business profitability.

Project Profile & UX Strategic Approach:

Already in operation for schools internationally, this 1-to-10 Service Design project required a more conservative hybrid UX strategy to introduce value without disrupting existing workflows and customer relationships. Starting with in-depth, collaborative research, ideas for improvement were conceptualized, planned, and implemented across the IT and Survey Production teams without disrupting ongoing survey delivery efforts.

Competency Highlights & Results:

Leveraged UX Research & strategic design expertise to flesh out innovative improvements for a key product line:

Increased overall workflow capacity by 400-600% by addressing existing service design issues for users & in-house team.
Established first-to-market leadership with automated survey offerings, enabling cross-selling & research opportunities.

Provided essential operational design skills to produce meaningful business results:

300% increase in combined revenues, with 80% reduction in-curated survey times, and scalable automated products.
Increased customer satisfaction (average NPS 7 -> 9) with a more robust and accessible product line.
Increased measured work satisfaction, reducing team turnover by 40%.

Mentored and guided a cross-functional team to map service architecture, discover requirements, and deliver product success:

Established educational training program for Survey Team up-skilling without disrupting ongoing client delivery.
Worked closely with development team to map multi-stack service process, and integrate these technologies seamlessly into a single product.