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Research by Ian Wyosnick
December 2024 | UX Researcher: Ian Wyosnick | Status: Finalized
The purpose of this research was to determine whether Platform should be built as either a "Project-Centric Model" or an "Application-Centric Model" by gathering insights into how users currently navigate our applications, their key pain points, and what type of experience will provide the most value. Moderated interviews were conducted with 5 regional sales teams, 10 product teams, 3 senior SST product leaders, and 5 customers.
Key research questions were:
Research indicates that customers desire a "user-centric model" that incorporates key aspects of both the project and application-centric models and utilizes role-based access to applications.
To create a user-centric model, Platform needs to take into account the following:
TL;DR: Building a platform around projects and incorporating role-based access to specialized tools can provide a seamless, scalable, and flexible solution that is adaptable to diverse customer workflows and needs.
Conversations revealed evidence in favor of a project-centric platform with role-based customization to applications. Key customer needs included:
In addition, teams and customers emphasized other considerations:
This research is an initial step in the development of Platform and determining how it will operate. More work is necessary to create the Platform customer experience, gather insight into how our customers will leverage it, and determine how it will be built over the next three years.
Anticipated future activities are:
How do users currently interact with multiple applications? Do they want a unified experience within one platform, or are they satisfied with switching between applications?
We identified few customers that move across multiple SST tools, but all engage with outside applications to get their work done. Interviewees spoke of needs such as:
TL;DR: Overall, a user-centric model is the primary way SST can address customer needs. This model leads with a project-centric approach that emphasizes transparency and sharing project data across tools, while incorporating aspects of an application-centric design that allows customers to focus deeply on a tool.
What are our users' main usability challenges with the current systems? Do they struggle with fragmented workflows and disjointed data across applications?
Answer
Customers struggle with inconsistency between applications and with overly complex tools and features. They also desire better coordination of data, content, information, and communication across their tools. They would prefer a single platform that can facilitate their workflows and easily integrate with other tools.
Are users likely to embrace a new, centralized platform, or will they prefer incremental changes to existing systems? What kind of training or support would they need?
Answer
This is a difficult question to assess from this research. The industries SST serves are perceived to be behind technology-wise, but research indicates there is a growing shift toward more modern approaches and tools. Further research will need to focus on answering this question, identifying risks, and creating a plan for deploying the Platform.
Are there specific scenarios where a common platform would greatly improve efficiency or are applications used in isolation where an application-centric model is more appropriate?
Answer
A Platform that seamlessly shares data, information, documents, and communication between tools is something our customers and teams want to use and deploy. However, there are cases, particularly for design and production, where application-centric approaches may have an advantage.
Findings are split into the following categories:
| Finding | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Primary Findings for Platform | |
| Customers need a solution that can manage all project work | Store all information, documents, communications and tools for a project or job within a "space". Allow projects to be split out into sub-projects. |
| Customers desire quick access to specific tools and data, typically based on their role | Utilize role-based permissions that restrict users from seeing anything beyond what their role requires. Allow view access to critical information or documents within applications, without allowing access to the application itself. |
| Communication, content, and data needs to be tracked with the project | Maintain documents and communications across a project for all roles and tools to reference. Improve project activity history. Integrate with existing communication systems (e.g Teams, Outlook). |
| Secondary Findings for Platform and SST Applications | |
| Customers want to reduce the time and effort producing estimates | Tightly integrate design and estimating tools. Improve the process of importing and converting files supplied by a client into design drawings. Close the gap between designs created for an estimate and what is produced. |
| Customers get overwhelmed by unnecessary information and functionality | Guided onboarding based on use case. Tool tips and proactive help. Progressive disclosure of capabilities. AI powered assistance and guidance. |
| Customers need tools to analyze data and metrics to improve operations | Develop dashboards that allow users to track project metrics, profitability, and trends in real-time. Centralize data across tools to ensure consistency and provide a unified platform for analytics. |
| Identified Opportunities | |
| AI can streamline workflows, enhance precision, and reduce costs | AI ideas recommended: Resolving challenges in plate placement, Truss design optimization, Leveraging historical data for design efficiency, Enhanced estimation capabilities |
| Customers highlight the need for improved communication and notification systems | Develop a notification system that informs key stakeholders about critical changes. Introduce a robust history feature to log all project communications. Automate tasks like sending approval requests. |
| Customers want to integrate with tools outside the SST ecosystem | Develop APIs to enable data flow with tools such as Spruce, PlanSwift, Outlook, or Teams. Integrate with POS systems and BIM tools. Explore a third-party developer marketplace. |
| Customers desire "localization" that adapts their tools to local practices and regulations | Emulate systems like Avalara that quickly reference local regulations and industry practices. Dive deeper with customers to document local practices. |
| Internal teams want to help customers discover relevant tools | Explore "freemium" or free trial models and microtransactions. Expose all tools to customers and allow them to try them out on a limited basis. |
| Risks and Considerations | |
| Customers already have tools that perform similar functions to what Platform may do | Continue to research the ecosystem of tools that our customers use. |
| Industries are reliant on manual and non-digital processes, but are slowly modernizing | Continue to assess how Platform can be rolled out successfully with customers that are behind technology-wise |
A common theme is a need for software that can efficiently track work and incorporate more tools. This need grows along with the complexity of the work that is being undertaken. A few pain points were:
"I want director to be able to manage a project regardless of the size...from start to finish all in the same place."
- Design Lead, Stark Truss
"[Trello is] more common than I thought it was. I'd never heard of it before. After going to a couple of the trade shows and we went to some classes, the speakers that are saying stuff about it, trying to get people to use these kind of things. It's easy. That's what I like about it."
- Sunstone Construction
"I've never had anyone ask me in my entire career for a platform where they could choose a la carte. What they ask is, 'give us a platform where we can pick your brand over someone else's…The more seamless it is, the better."
- Canada Sales Team
Interviewees talked about how certain roles need to focus on only the tools required for their work. They don't need to be encumbered by more functionality beyond what is needed to do their job. However, research also indicates that role responsibilities vary depending on factors such as industry, company operations, company size, company location, etc.
"I would prefer to have a bunch of individual apps that did individual things very specialized and very well rather than trying to force everything into Director and make Director my document repository, my engineering hub, my layout drawing tool, my production batching tool, my pricing tool."
- Riverside Sales Team
"It should feel like a common platform of a product where it's like each product might have its purpose, but it looks and feels the same."
- Truss Studio Design Product Tripod
"Have more of a customizable interface, because the information [designers] want to see can be different from a design manager or the person that does shipping."
- Columbus Sales Team
Participants emphasized the need for integrated communication and document management workflows. The desire is for Platform to not only manage documents and assets effectively but also facilitate and record a history of communication and activity.
"The communication, if it could happen all in director, that would be impressive."
- Design Lead, Stark Truss
"Right now, everything's manual. They have to go through God knows how many different manual steps, slap it into an Outlook email, and send it off."
- Stockton Sales Team
Customers spend time creating estimates for bids that they do not win, resulting in waste. Interviewees mentioned that helping streamline the time-consuming and complex estimating and planning processes would be solving one of our customers' biggest pain points.
"Bidding is a massive, massive pain point…When we talk to truss plants, I would say the singular largest pain point they have is, 'I've gotta get this bid done, and it takes all this legwork.'"
- Stockton Sales
"One of the challenges with bids is these guys' margins are fairly tight, so they don't they don't like to guess. Guessing can lead to a mess that, you know, either lose money on the job or you don't get the job."
- Canada Sales
Reducing complexity was a recurring theme in interviews. Customers and product teams were clear in their feedback that they want to reduce the number of clicks required to get where they need to go.
"Personally, mouse clicks. This program is very dialogue box intensive. So, there's a lot of jumping into a dialogue box, telling your story, hitting okay, jumping out and seeing that, oh, wait. That's not what I meant to do"
- Design Lead, Stark Truss
"But one of the things that I'm absolutely resolute in is that our software has to be incredibly simple to use. It's not to say we can't put in all kinds of advanced features and stuff like that. But ultimately, it has to be incredibly simple to use at the end of the day."
- Producer and Batching Tripods
"The majority of the users really need something that is relatively basic, something that they could go in and start using without a lot of hand holding from us."
- Pipeline Product Team
Customers rely on data and metrics to evaluate project performance, align pricing, and forecast future jobs. However, existing tools require manual effort to compile and analyze information.
"At the end of a job, I pull all these numbers together through Director in order to send back to our main coordinator and he takes a look at our pricing and see how we've been bidding our jobs to see if we're in the plus, and how we can do better moving forward with other commercial jobs."
- Senior Truss Technician, Stark Truss
"It's about accessing real time data. It's about a centralized location where people can review and start building dashboards to see what is the health of the organization and be able to see trends."
- Director & Reporting Tripods
"Every builder's like, 'There's so much data here. What can we do to figure out what data we have? What can we learn?' They're looking to us and [we are] trying to help them out with some of those things."
- Pipeline
Integrating AI and digital tools into Simpson Strong-Tie's workflow presents a significant opportunity to enhance precision, efficiency, and decision-making across design, assembly, and management processes.
AI ideas recommended by interviewees are:
Interviewees express a need for better communication systems. They advocate for features like instant alerts for production changes, integrated communication within project tools, commenting and notifications in documents, and better tracking of communications across a project.
"An instant alert to the production manager for changes pending…would be huge."
- Producer & Batching Tripod
"…communication is the one consistent pain point that has been talked about by every last [customer]. It's inefficient, almost to the point of nonexistence within our tooling. So everything is done manually."
- Director & Reporting Tripods
"You know, we almost got double filing system. We file it in Outlook, and then we file it in Director. But if we filed it all in Director, man, I'd be stoked about that."
- Ernie Arambula
Interviewees highlighted a need for integrations with POS and BIM systems, and tools such as Spruce, PlanSwift, and Outlook.
"…if there are API connections that can talk to the big POS connection systems, which can be shown to the customers on their end, that can be a platform capability."
- Pipeline LBM and Takeoff Tripods
"But some of the feedback that we got is, well, what about inventory? We don't handle the inventory. That's about managing the entire company right in one place."
- Director & Reporting Tripods
"There are some opportunities maybe between PlanSwift and Pipeline. It'd be nice if they were a little bit smoother transaction there."
- Estimating Lead, Nation's Best Lumber
Interviews mentioned the particulars that different regions or different facilities within a larger org have when it comes to business operations, building practices, and building codes.
"There's not one this is the way of how you do it. It all depends on those business relationships based on the geography of where you particularly are in the country."
- Pipeline LBM and Takeoff Tripods
"I've been doing this enough in Texas that, we have found out in all the areas that I've worked, Texas framing is very singular. You know, in Florida, they have their techniques, South Carolina, New Hampshire."
- Estimating Lead, Nation's Best Lumber
"There are no two truss plants in the country that run the same way. I've even seen within the same company, like a Builders First Source or US LBM, different truss plants will use different methodologies to build it."
- Stockton Sales Team
A few teams discussed ideas around how we help customers discover the tools that SST offers that can provide value to them.
"I like the idea of considering a standard way of connecting other products that could be useful to our users in this Autodesk space."
- LotSpec Tripod
"Here's a simple free version of this thing and you can do very basic things. If you want to do some other things, here's how much that would cost you."
- Pipeline Tripod
"One of the things I like about [DeckPlanner] is it has a much shorter learning curve than a lot of our other products. So, if it's in the platform experience, it can be a catalyst for opening doors to other types of longer-range business."
- OLS Tripod
There are many tools that customers currently use to manage work that are either purchased or developed in-house.
"Another thing that's really weird in component manufacturing is people developing their own software is more common than you think. It's so specific and so specialized that the supplier trying to come up with a solution for everybody is just difficult. So, a lot of people, if they have the pockets for it, they'll just pony up the money and do it themselves."
- Riverside Sales Team
There is clearly a sense that the truss, LBM, and construction industries in general are lagging technology-wise. But customers we interviewed mentioned a growing trend of moving toward cloud and Platform-like solutions.
"In this industry, it's kinda weird that everything seems to be about ten or fifteen years behind technology wise."
- CTO, Davis Hawn
"We find that a lot of them are, for lack of a better word, mom and pop operations and they do things very old style. A lot of them have been resistant to computerized takeoffs as they call them. But we've been able to convert their thinking on that and turn things around."
- Estimating Lead, Nation's Best Lumber