Encore Experience
Product designer / Gilbarco Veeder Root
GVR’s Encore Experience -giving retailers a platform
to control and manage their consumers’ Pump Experience.
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What is Encore?
Gilbarco Veeder-Root announced today the launch of the Gilbarco Veeder-Root Encore Experience. This cloud-based open applications platform enables retailers to customize on-screen experiences to delight consumers at the forecourt and drive them inside their convenience stores. (October 01, 2019)
On Encore Experience, managers can purchase security-signature apps, set a campaign for all/each of the fuel dispensers, apply for live data-driven promotions and design the content.
We were the R&D team that developed the Content Management Service & GVR apps.
Roles & Responsibilities
What’s my part?
Areas of Responsibility
I operated as a product designer.
I was responsible for UX and research, user flows, IA, design system & prototyping.
Team
2 developers, 1 QA, and me as the product designer.
Project manager
Our team was based in Israel, while the project manager was located in the US. We had weekly meetings and constant demos to make that long-distance relationship work.
Duration
6 months
Discovery
Expectations
This wasn't the first content management platform GVR clients used.
I had partial experience designing the Insite360 Impulse Portal a product with a similar goal in common to Encore Experience - content management service for Impulse©.
Being part of the Impulse portal lifecycle exposed me to user feedback data. I hate to say but, the Impulse Portal wasn't the brightest product in our bag and was desperate for a re-design. Users, followed by stakeholders, were asking for a better version.
Stakeholders decided to invest in Encore Experience, being a potential alternative for Impulse Portal. Expectations were high.
Insite360 Impulse Portal
The Insite360 Impulse portal immediately reports KPI and campaigns performance
The portal also helps retailers create, edit, and control the campaigns for better performance.
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Connect the Dots
Research
User Interviews
Marketing teams gathered user expectations for the next version of Impulse Portal. With those user interviews, we had a list of user needs. The Product Manager then prioritized all the features and shared the yearly release plan.
Home Screen
Impulse Portal
User Analysis
For user feedback on Impulse Portal, I reached out to our support team and together we analyzed support tickets, reports, and user requests. This research dropped a few coins. After that I could deeply relate to the user in terms of pain points, understand why popular features were popular, and what were the basic user needs and desires regarding the service.
Manage Schdule Tasks
Manage Schdule Tasks
Market Research
I searched for inspiration for CMS systems in general, management services in industries with similar display needs. Like E-commerce management services, visual editors, survey services, product management tools.
I also researched user forms design, learned more about the UX of form completion, and how to best apply it in our interface design.
Manage Schdule Tasks
Manage Schdule Tasks
Visual Research
I searched for inspiration for CMS and general management services in industries with similar display needs, like Ecommerce management services (Shopify), visual editors (Wix), survey services (Typeform), product management tools.
I also researched user forms design, learned more about the UX of form completing, and how to best imply it in the interface design.
I noticed visualization and imegry made CMS more engaging and freindlier to use. Since I was partially working on Impulse Portal project, I used those conclusions and created a design suggestion for a new screen in Impulse portal. An Edit Item screen of a game feature.
Design Suggestion before Encore
Impulse Portal Mockup
Design Strategy
Inherit & Refine
The high user expectations and the business context of the product led me to further explore the Impulse Portal to better empathize with the user's starting point.
Corrective Experience
Here's a comparison of both products conveying s some long-overdue changes:
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Impulse© Portal top menu had to go. It was confusing, disorienting at times, just wasn't functioning properly as a menu. Luckily, we inherited the Insite360© left-hand menu and added a secondary menu for Content management.
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Empty forms shouldn't be empty of content, simply because it's easier to start with an example than from scratch. We decided to use thumbnails for promotion types as a visual context and have a default color theme, users can always come back to.
Encore Experience was accessed via Insite360©, so some general CSS styles must apply. The Content Management section I was responsible for, was activated as an iFrame within the Insite360© site. The UX/UI meaning is retaining the same design guide and information architecture for consistency of use.
Lists & Forms
The basic content structures of the information architecture on Insite360© were:
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Lists of existing items, with sorting & filtering.
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Adding new items/editing existing items was solved in a form of wizards.
I kept those structures with some adaptations:
The main user task is form completion, so I chose to invest the entire frame for the form, instead of the wizard component.
Here's a comparison of the Schedule setting page:
Impulse Portal
Encore
Since I've designed the Pump Experience Apps it was natural for me to continue designing the Content Management of those apps.
I understood the user flows, required user-input, customizable assets.
I could envision the tables, the forms, the dynamic preview.
Screen Preview
One of the main pain points of Impulse© Portal users was the absence of the screen preview, they wanted to see the actual screen with their created content before publishing. I decided to design an editable preview, a form with custom input elements inside the preview. The user immediately sees if the text is too long, if colors don't match, it gives a reliable reflection of the real outcome on dispenser screens. Here's a comparison of the Edit/ Add New Promotion page:
Impulse Portal
Encore
List
Form
Repeat
Design Process
We were putting together the final user-flows, I was arranging the information architecture and sketching the wireframes. Each app had its own section with 2 main page types:
A list of all items and a creation/edit form.
Later on, I started documenting all components and styles into a unified style & color guide.
Retailer Flow
After a retailer has purchased and applied GVR apps, he arrives at the Content Management service, selects the app, and can immediately start creating content.
Information Archetechture
The user could reach his available GVR Apps through the left-hand menu Content Management
The Information Architecture was based on the shared logic structure throughout the entire Content Management:
Each app had a list view of items and schedules
Each item could be edited on a form page.
This form page is identical to a New Item form.
Input & Preview
My UX approach concerning the forms was to only reveal the necessary, required fields. For example, each promotion type has slightly different required fields.
I insisted on having a dynamic preview of the app screens. I wanted the item creation experience to feel as immediate and real-sized as possible.
Lengthy forms are often conceived as frustrating, a hassle. I split the form into 2 defined steps and revealed only relevant input fields as the user progressed and only when necessary.
Campaign Schedule
Scheduling forms was a big part of the product. Each Content item had to have a schedule attached, to be published on Pump. Scheduling was defined by dates, days, dayparts, fuel states, sites, and dispensers.
Input & Preview
The Insite360 Encore Experience allows a direct data connection to the user's "price-book", a data source of all UPCs and their most updated details.
That ability contributed to a more fluent UX, with a single UPC input - we could automatically fill in about 4 more input fields: Item Description, Item Price & Price pre Unit, Promotional Amount. So when a user types in a correct UPC, almost all required data is immediately displayed in the dynamic preview.
Reports
Users needed to see analysis and reports, especially game-winning rates or reward claims.
Users can set the winning percentage for each game and follow through using a periodic report of the functionality of that game.
Move On
We revealed our entire platform at NACS and RTC conferences in 2019 and got great feedback.
After the first release, we reached to our clients for user feedback. The comparison with the Impulse portal was still in user-consciousness and the new content management performed better in many ways:
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Navigation & orientation were easier for most users.
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The user task was fluent and cohesive.
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Branding & styling are very important to all clients. We started working on customizable branding per site. Some retailers had a different franchise for each site.
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Users wanted to control the promotions order, customize their own playlist - that was the next feature we worked on:
This project is still in development, and like all products, there are constant improvements to be made. This platform is crucial for the Pump Experience and I believe it has made it easier for retailers to control their campaigns and keep up with KPI. I know I was proud to be part of the process, the teamwork, and I'm very proud of the result.
