DESIGN PRACTICE INNOVATION
UX design considerations for acquisitions: Product Integrations
Your company bought a product they want to integrate into existing products… (Part 2 of 3)
Written in collaboration with Misha Vaughan, VP of UX at ICE Mortgage Technology.
This is Part 2 of a three part series on the UX considerations for designers, design leaders, or architects charged with developing the plan for alignment of user experiences of acquisitions.
In Part 1 we introduced the idea of a continuum of choices and largely focused on standalone products.
Now your company bought a product they want to integrate into existing products…
In this part we consider the more likely occurrence of having to bring products together. These are great starting points for initiating conversations with product management and engineering about product experiences that can enhance cross-sell and growth opportunities.
10 Design Considerations when Integrating Products
When entities are acquired to bolster products that support the main roles of the product line, the likely considerations are about integrating the new functionality. Beforehand, however, there is visual continuity and conceptual conflict resolution cleanup to consider to reduce customer confusion, user frustration, and support calls. We know the aim is finding new opportunities for cross-sell or growth via integrations, but a lack of plan on the first issues will increase frustration in the very customers you want to excite.
Visual Continuity
Before building integrations between products, a company may want to just update the look of the acquired product to the existing product’s brand styling to indicate that its sphere of functionality has grown. There is no advantage to the users when interacting with the product. It mainly makes sales and marketing messages about the product family easier. The change will need to be coordinated with marketing, as without external communications the changes may be puzzling to users.
1. Styling to a Design System
It is relatively easy to update colors, fonts and iconography to more closely match the primary product line. This stylizing to match the primary product line’s look & feel can help bring the acquired products into the family. It does not, however, make developing the acquired product more efficient.
2. Migrating to a Design System
Moving the acquired product to the existing product’s design system makes the acquired company’s product look part of the family and act like part of the family. If the acquired company had its own design system this can streamline the design engineering effort going forward.
One of the values of a design system can be that it has accessibility built in so that making acquired products accessible requires less effort. If the design system provides accessibility, the development effort of migrating an acquired product to the design system can have added value.
Take a look at Part 1 for more details about visual continuity.
Conflict Resolution
There are a number of ways that two user experiences can have competing concepts that will make it difficult for users to understand the resulting integration. An effort will be needed to resolve these issues to create a harmonious product that creates no speed bumps to efficient or enjoyable use.
3. Language Harmonization
Within a domain, acquired products often use the same words to mean the same objects and actions but there are still occasions when an acquired product’s language varies from the existing product’s. For example, if the primary product uses the word “document” but the acquired product uses “file”, your team will need to decide a path to resolution on these differences.
As an integrated product experience, these differences will decrease the usability and perhaps even increase support calls. Changing the acquired product to match the existing product, or vice versa, will likely require retraining users of one of the products. So, keep in mind that resolving language differences can require not only development, but also documentation and marketing changes.
4. Interaction Harmonization
Most likely products from different companies will have different interactions for the same components. A minor example would be using checkboxes to indicate selection versus just a highlight indicating selection. If the product has more graphical or drag and drop functionality the differences could be starker. Any features which will coexist need to have these differences in interaction remediated so that the user is not confused and unsure how components work.
5. Feature Harmonization
Similar to generating alignment on the language used to describe objects in an application, feature harmonization looks to resolve differences between what the user can do with the objects. If the products will not be integrated for a long enough period and users will be using them side-by-side, then any differences will be more noticeable. For example, if both systems handle calendar appointments but meetings are made differently the differences in user interactions between the same objects across systems will cause frustration and possibly make users lose trust in the product. Since the experiences are different and the users cannot see what the backend is doing, they may become unsure if both systems are treating the objects the same.
UX may not be the engine to resolve feature harmonization issues, as it often requires effort beyond UX. Still, UX needs to be aware when feature differences cause user issues and be prepared with design solutions.
Module Integration
Now onto the directions that will make your product manager excited. Integration will often come in phases, either as companies have the resources to make different scale changes or as customers are willing to uptake changes to their processes. The following integration directions illustrate levels of effort to bring a set of features together.
6. Punchout
For a low development cost your company can create a link out of an existing product to a tab or window with the acquired product. While some context can be transferred, from the users’ point of view they have to adjust to moving from one experience to another. For aspects of the products that overlap users may question or not understand how similar parts interact. That can mean extra effort, errors, or a loss of trust due to inconsistencies and differences. However, a punchout can create excitement in the market, and is an easy win.
7. iFrame without reskinning
While it is unlikely that, if two companies styles are wildly different, it would be appropriate to iFrame the content of one into the other, it is technically possible. If the functionality is minimal and the styles are similar, using iFrames without reskinning may be sufficient.
This integration direction is more of a functional or marketing decision than a design decision — It puts the acquired product’s functionality within the environment of the overall existing product’s process. Interaction and content inconsistencies between the two parts will not only cause confusion but may also cause a loss in trust in both products because users will not be sure what is happening in the backend.
As a UX professional you don’t want to die on this hill, so you will need a productive way to move forward. This is the perfect place to do light-weight user feedback sessions which you can share internally to make sure parties understand users reactions to the integration — such as whether this will effect a buy decision.
8. iFrame with reskinning
The third incarnation of this direction is to reskin the acquired product to match the existing product it is being integrated into. This still does not resolve information architecture confusion but it looks more cohesive. Additionally, it is likely that there will be interaction mismatches (like menus that act differently when clicked or same named menus across the systems with different contents), that can confound the user.
It is critical to collect customer feedback before this integration reaches the market so that, at a minimum you can identify any show stoppers. Integrations that are celebrated in marketing collateral only really get one chance to make a good first impression.
9. Rearchitecting to full integration
Rearchitecting or reimagining how the technologies from existing and acquired products can coexist and multiply their value lets a company develop a network of options. Workshops and user research activities can be used to accelerate the process of generating high value from integrating an acquisition’s capabilities. A direct benefit of UX driving the ideation of the integration possibilities is alignment on a common vision that can include product management, engineering, sales and marketing.
When considering acquisitions, companies often have grand plans about the business values of those targets. However, in living through acquisitions, what we have seen from the inside, again and again, is a loss of focus on pushing an acquisition’s integration to its full potential. This particular focus is probably the single biggest growth multiplier for getting the most out of cross-sell opportunities. To meet the promise that is expected of an acquisition’s integration these ideation efforts can provide immense value — otherwise you may never see the potential value.
10. Evolving the integration to future user experience directions
Something that should be kept in mind is how the acquired product will interact with future services, products or platforms in research or development. You, as a UX leader have an opportunity to lead by considering how upcoming technologies, near term or far future such as chatbots and augmented reality could impact the integration. Evaluating how upcoming technologies and experiences will fit in to or add to the integration experience is a strategy to efficiently reduce the possibility of wasted effort.
Next…other bits and the journey
In the next article we’ll talk about other parts of your product line you will want to keep an eye on when considering user experience integration of acquisitions.
In addition, we will provide some concrete steps you can take to work with your partner organizations on these efforts.
Thank you to Joe Dumas and Andrew Avedian for their thoughtful insights and proof reading.
