Rebecca Hathaway
is a content-first* product designer & information architect at heart.
*I'll use lorem ipsum if I have to, but for best results, I'd vastly prefer to design around your actual content.
Design & content strategy for transitioning a support chatbot to conversational AI
Autodesk Education Chatbot
Verifying school and university affiliation adds an additional layer of complexity to software license validation. As one of two designers working on the support chatbot evolution, my area of focus was support for education customers.
I partnered with key stakeholders to provide strategic design direction for evolving the education chatbot from a rigid decision tree model to a conversational AI model. To understand verification requirements for students and educators, I collaborated with the education support team and the business analyst. I audited the existing decision tree structure and made recommendations for outdated and redundant decision tree branches.
Drove design strategy and garnered stakeholder support for a phased approach that would address customer pain points while making progress toward longer term business goals.
design strategy
content strategy
b2b
b2c
Reducing support agent case load with improved navigation and information architecture
Autodesk Help & Support
Customers visiting Autodesk Support have one goal: solve their problem quickly and get back to work. Prior research and feedback indicated that most customers wanted to self-solve, yet support agents were inundated with tickets for issues that already had solutions documented on the site.
As the UX lead, I conducted interviews with internal SMEs and facilitated workshops to reach alignment on business goals, user needs, and project scope. Based on the results of the content strategy team’s audit, I defined a content model and redesigned navigation, working closely with a visual designer to create design system patterns and AEM components. A series of A/B tests, and iterating on designs, pointed more customers to commonly sought-after solutions.
+10% aggregate CES
+92% CTR on navigational links to common issues
-53% support cases created for corresponding issues
ux design
ux research
content model
b2b
b2c
Empowering industrial design students with contextual in-product learning
Autodesk Fusion
Fusion was critical to Autodesk's cloud strategy, but new subscribers struggled with adoption. Traditional help documentation was slowing them down. Users wanted guidance at the moment of need, not tutorials they had to hunt for.
The content strategist and I conducted a content audit of existing learning content. I conducted a competitive analysis of existing learning panels and software tutorials for a variety of design tools, interviewed users to learn about desired features and existing pain points, and designed a modularized framework intended to scale across devices and platforms based on atomic design principles.
+77% monthly active users over the following academic year
"I hope they put more work into this because it's really good if you're a beginner!" — Fusion content creator
product design
SaaS
content model
b2b
b2c
Clarifying the product vision and roadmap for a climate tech startup via user research
Purpose Design Co & Aire Labs
Aire Labs is on a mission to accelerate the deployment of climate positive technologies, helping to decarbonize our global economy faster. Understanding their beachhead market segment was critical to identifying product-market fit for their prototype.
As the lead researcher on the Purpose Design team, I conducted user interviews to understand user pain points, define their ideal customer profile, and determine highest value Jobs To Be Done (JTBD). I coached UX interns through analysis of research findings and presentations to key stakeholders.
Research insights informed the product vision & roadmap for a platform to help project developers working on climate positive projects scale faster and operate better.
UX research
startup
