TL;DR
Product: Prime Portal used by staff for administrative tasks (beta and classic versions).
Research method: Usability Testing & Cognitive Walkthrough, Contextual Inquiry, Stakeholder Interview
Findings: Distraction, efficiency and communication suffered when using the Portal.
Solution: Introduce Slack integration and kanban-style workflow design
Prime Staff Portal
Prime Digital Academy has a customized web application they call Prime Portal. This tool is used by all members of the staff to conduct their work. The Portal was built to help manage the student admissions process, maintain documentation of basic academic progress, act as an employer partnerships database, and support the documentation of graduated student placements post Prime. This year, the portal is undergoing a redesign to include admissions activities that are currently in what they called their BETA site. Prime asked for an evaluation of how well the application currently performs and to make suggestions on how to improve it.
Thinking With Portals
Video walkthrough of Beta site
I began the research process by conducting a cognitive walkthrough of the Portal (both the Beta and Classic version) to identify existing usability issues. Prime provided some videos of a testing environment because there was sensitive information that they weren’t comfortable sharing. The test environment gave me a general sense of the workflow as well as the overall look of the Portal. The BETA site allowed me to interact with the Portal first hand, and better understand the core functionality. This gave me a sense of the user's mental model. The research was primarily focused on common usability issues: consistency, visibility, and feedback while giving me some familiarity with the Portal before jumping into usability testing.
Remote Usability Testing Evaluation
Adaptability was the name of the game.
A team of 4 UX practitioners set out to conduct Remote Evaluations that were previously scheduled as in-person interviews. That wasn’t an option once Covid-19 spread and the world moved to a “socially distant” approach. The Prime staff and research team proved to be very adaptable in this experience and it allowed me to continue my work remotely. The contextual inquiry script we wrote was to help identify pain points in the design. Since the context was a big part of the research, I asked a lot of questions about how, when, and why they use the Portal the way they do. This research worked well to give me insight into the pain points of the Portal.
“The portal separates all this data, I basically duplicate the data so I can have these conversations with the team. ”
Portal to Distraction
“I don’t have a super satisfying or productive day using the portal.”
My findings were less about the usability and more about the gaps in the system and the workarounds the participants used to help them when using the Prime Portal. One interesting point was how different my cognitive insights were to the findings uncovered during the interviews. I found a lot of issues the users never even mentioned and missed quite a few very obvious workarounds the users had developed in their workflows. Thank goodness for usability research! My general findings were revealed by the participants within the first 3 minutes of their interviews. While the results varied on the participant’s job, the common thread was the lack of focus they were able to maintain. With all the jumping around from program to program, the little free time the user had to focus on their administrative duties was still riddled with side steps.
“At this point in the process, I’ve probably already gotten distracted. ”
Students First
While the Portal worked well in some ways (consistency, hierarchy, etc), it didn’t create an efficient workflow for the users I observed. There are a lot of steps in the user’s process that allowed them to get off task, easily distracted, or reach a dead-end without being able to communicate it. Prime is an immersive environment for students that are in the program for a short timeframe but while in the program, they spend many hours a day on campus. This means the staff is frequently pulled away from their administrative work to help their students. I experienced this first hand during an interview. The participant had to stop our interview to answer a call from a Prime Employer partner. This was an important call for the participant to take because it was the week before a new group of developers was to graduate. This week, in their program, they have a day filled with interviews that she coordinates. This was of top importance for her and she knew this could help a student get a job. This interruption was a prime (ah, see what I did there) example of an interruption that completely interrupted a user's task flow.
Participant taking another call during Usability Testing.
“What were we doing? I have completely forgotten…shoot”
“I put it in a folder on my desktop because there is a glitch in the system that once that student is admitted into the program, their résumé link breaks”
Simple Fix
There were simple workarounds that a developer could change quickly that I included in the findings as an improvement that could be done quickly..
Notifications and Incorporations
After the interview I worked on synthesizing the findings from the observations. It became clear that the users would benefit from a system to notify them of the task flows and incorporating the technology they use to communicate with one another. My Research Findings and Prototype Plan allowed me to focus my process on one path and start designing my suggestions.
Portal Redesign
I used these findings to propose useful changes to the interaction and functionality of the Portal that would aid in the efficiency of the Prime staff. I communicated the findings back to Prime in the form of a remote walk-thru prototype. I presented my high-fidelity prototypes using a scenario to frame the context of use. I included design documentation in the form of a UI pattern library and an update to the design that complies with AA visual accessibility guidelines.
Design System
The proposed design system would include the additional assets in the high fidelity prototypes that I created. Prime already had a pretty well defined system for typography, colors, spacing, scale/vertical rhythm, and navigation patterns.
Proposed Modals and Dropdowns
Proposed additional assets
In conclusion
The design decisions I propose were chosen to help the user with efficiency, communication and focus. The Prime Portal would benefit from simple additions that would allow the user to work more effectively. This would benefit the user as well as the client because the user would be able to accomplish their tasks quickly, giving them more time engaging with their students.