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Finance Laptop Study
UX Research
full case study
the problem
The finance department began reporting issues with their laptops and an internal departmental survey revealed that many felt as if their laptops were not supporting their daily tasks. They reported that their laptops were slow and that certain programs frequently crash, specifically when working with high volumes of data and code.
the goal
To define the level of challenge users experience with their current technology stack and uncover drivers of any reported issues to the Digital Employee Experience (DEX) team.
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participant selection
Zoom user data broken down by business unit and number of meetings per month. Business unit names were redacted for privacy.
Finance department leadership identified 97 employees who were considered high priority for an upgrade to a larger GB laptop. We focused our study on these individuals, as they were most likely experiencing the technological issues that were reported in the inter-departmental survey.
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research methodology
user zoom survey
A Userzoom survey consisting of 11 questions was created to help us uncover the most common laptop issues, the possible causes of those issues, and the level of challenge that those issues bring. Participants were also asked to provide their specific job role and team to see if specific teams were experiencing certain issues more than others.
user interviews
To support the results from the survey, we also interviewed 3 employees from the finance department on their experiences with laptop issues and how these issues affected their daily tasks, workflows, and work-life balance.
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data analysis & key findings
Data analysis slides from final deliverable that was presented to the DEX team. Full deliverable available upon request.
key findings
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50% of participants report challenges with their laptops while the other 50% have good laptop performance.
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The impacts of poor laptop performance are multi-faceted, causing missed deadlines, bottlenecking of deliverables, loss of time due to redoing work that was lost as a result of computer/program crashes, and poor work-life balance (i.e. longer work days and working on weekends)
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41% of participants indicated Excel as a driver of laptop performance issues
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Issues experienced include:
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computer and program freezes and crashes (57%)
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slow computer performance (52%)
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These issues were noted to occur primarily when:
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working with large files (i.e. spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) (69%)
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multiple programs are running simultaneously (64%)
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performing heavy or resource-intensive tasks (56%)
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04
study outcomes
post - presentation
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After the survey results and analysis were presented, the DEX team launched a 4-week pilot study with several finance department employees as participants.
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New laptops containing upgraded 64-bit Microsoft Office software were sent to participants.
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Participants were asked to conduct their daily tasks on both their current laptop and the new laptop to compare performance and help determine if there is improvement with the upgraded software.
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Check-in meetings were held once per week during the duration of the study to ask participants if they noticed any improvements or bugs.
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Participants' laptop performance was also monitored using Nexthink.
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The pilot study showed that conducting daily tasks with 64-bit Microsoft Office was more efficient and significantly decreased occurrences of laptop issues.
impacts
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Due to survey and pilot study results, the DEX team made the decision to upgrade 180 finance department employees to 64-bit Microsoft Office, which was a more cost-effective solution
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Those who were upgraded experience little to no laptop performance issues
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Finance department employee satisfaction with their technology stack improved
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Post-study Employee Engagement Survey results showed fewer feedback on productivity impact due to laptop configurations as compared to prior years!