Final Version
What’s @ Stake | Problem Statement
Projectionary is the brainchild of two entrepreneurs who wanted to create a useful tool for program management targeting non-government organizations projects across the globe. I was hired to be the user experience designer within a team of two owners of the organization, a developer, and designer, all of whom lived in a different time zones across the country.
The custom web application was build using the Logical Framework method of program management, and the owners wanted to create a better user interaction that increased the number of return users.
Discovery | 10 Weeks until Launch
My Contribution:
- Set up and facilitate client-facing weekly status meetings
- Create, facilitate, and take notes for cross-functional team meetings
- Maintain project plan and timeline
- Conduct competitive landscape analysis
- Create user personas and scenarios
- Create user journey maps
- Create and manage requirement documentation
The goal of the user experience research was to create a set of requirements for the designer and developer to update the website without changing the backend of how the custom application was built.
I started with asking one question: What stopped the user from returning?
To understand the target audience’s needs, I analyzed historic user data from Projectionary’s Google Analytics and noticed only 13% stayed after signing up for the first time, and 6% of their total users were managing active projects. These data points indicated that Projectionary’s audience was being underserved and that the current website user interaction and load speeds were a bigger issue that first realized.
I developed user personas, scenarios and user journey maps to generate more effective user-focused conversations with the Projectionary team. I presented the team with a list of user's priority focus areas and key indicators of success on in the redesign, which included increasing return users, increase number of active users, and special focus on non-English or English as a Second Language users.
Based on the research, the following end-user requirements became clear:
1) Fast load times to accommodate for dial-up speed/satellite connection
2) Data-entry feel/dashboard environment
3) Responsive design
4) Simplified and general language
5) Provide example projects for users to reference
Information Architecture and Content Strategy | 8 Weeks until Launch
My Contribution:
- Create information architecture and content taxonomy
Based on the personas, I created task scenarios for users to discover the content in a flexible, intuitive, and clear way. The first recommendation I made was to change the original flow of a project- management feel (like Basecamp) to a dashboard in order to gain flexibility in the hierarchy of the process. This is due to the dashboard being an information management platform that is used to track pre-defined business metrics, marketing KPIs, and other key operational data points relevant to an organization, business unit, or support function(s) that program managers and the target audience were comfortable navigating.
This is also where more user research became paramount as the team debated the number of active programs or projects a user would manage on average.
Prototype Creation | 6 Weeks until Launch
My Contribution:
- Draft flat wireframes for decisionmaker's reviews and approvals
- Create A/B testing requirements
- Update human-centered designs based on user testing feedback
- Develop website launch and rollout plan
After the four revisions to the prototype based on internal reviews, I advised Projectionary that the best way to know what users needed was to ask users, and I created an A/B test for users with three active projects versus ten. After five users responded to the test, we discovered the end-user managing about one to two projects every 9 months to a year.
Results
Active users were up to 30% within the first 30 days and return users were up 25% after the first 60 days.
