Innovation in action.
THE CHALLENGE
Staff, instructors and students need a way to suggest and vote on company and curriculum suggestions because there is no way to manage suggestions and they often fall through the cracks.
How might we:
… create a system for cross-company updates.
… give people the tools to take initiative.
… enable popular suggestions to rise to the top.
… help the community to feel involved.
… practice lean principles.
… give people the tools to take initiative.
… enable popular suggestions to rise to the top.
… help the community to feel involved.
… practice lean principles.
USER RESEARCH FINDINGS
User research interviews were conducted with 7 participants about their experience suggesting new ideas and their process within GA. In order to communicate findings, we created a comprehensive report with key insights from these findings, user journey map and personas.
Some key findings were that:
- Participants knew their idea had already been suggested which further proved our assumption that it takes multiple times for certain suggestions to rise to the top.
- Participants found current process laborious because there were too many methods of communication.
- Participants would be open to a solution that didn’t further complicate the list of tools but rather worked within existing structures.
Usability confirmed our assumptions that the current process was laborious and that it needed to be incorporated into existing products in order to be effectual.
““[When] they have to be escalated beyond the local scope can be more difficult. We were pinging everyone in engineering and product, and it kept going in circles.”
– GA Employee
PERSONAS
We created the persona of “The Employee” and “The Educator” in order to inform our understandings of the two very different user goals and behaviors.
“The Employee” struggled with a complicated process of suggesting improvements without knowing who the decision maker was.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: SITEMAP
Once we had done feature prioritization, the first step was to create a sitemap that outlined all pages the tool required.
WIREFRAMING: Low Fidelity
We used whiteboards to sketch out initial wireframe concepts and reworked final elements on paper before moving to Sketch.
USABILITY TEST FINDINGS
Usability research interviews were conducted with 6 participants. In order to communicate findings a report with key insights from these findings was created.
Some key findings were that:
- Users responded equally to the task of adding an idea therefore confirming our assumption of needing both boards and a search bar to complete the task.
- The majority of users had issues with the navigation and didn’t understand how to return home. To adjust we included a global heading on top of every page that gives user ability to click the GA logo to return home. This design pattern follows that of myGA.
- Some people still did not understand how and why to vote. To adjust we included a change in the voting iconography and included a jump interaction and highlight to show the user where their new idea that has been submitted.
Synthesizing usability test data.
STYLE GUIDE
In order to keep design consistency, we used General Assembly’s established style guide to inform the final visual design.
