my roles
process mapping & improvement / observational studies / visual design

In 2018, the current system needed was planned to be re-platformed and as part of that migration from on premise Sharepoint to the cloud.

As the platform - Sharepoint Online - had already been set, I needed to work within this constraint that needed to be considered as part of any new experience design.

opportunity

Improve Vector’s document collaboration & control experience

Discovery

To begin, I wanted to get to know the users of the current system, so I could create personas to help understand them more and their different needs.

A great starting point was the existing systems user groups, that had a series of permissions and roles associated with them. I used these as a basis for my personas and then gathered contact details for specific users from each group.

Next, I setup observational studies with each user to watch them working in the existing system - querying them as they went about normal day-to-day tasks. This helped to identify existing pain points and rooms for improvement.

I quickly learnt how slow and cumbersome the current process was for users and also identified that a lot of users had developed “workarounds” for existing system limitations and rules - in some cases side-stepping process and breaking agreed document control rules & regulations of Vector.

As an example, users in the existing system had to manually create an ID for their request using a complex matrix based in a Word doc. This manual ID was made of multiple parts and was very frustrating for users - causing them to just bypass and make up their own. The impact of this was loss of time to correct once submitted, with potential to be routed to an incorrect person for approval.

Interviews were also conducted with various SMEs and stakeholders around the business to clarify what was important to them in a document collaboration system - including comparing to other “best in class” solutions such as google docs etc.

design

Initially, I wanted to make sure I understood the process simply enough to describe to users as a series of simple steps.

I worked directly with SMEs & stakeholders to create a series of iterations of this before arriving at a final workflow which could be supported by the platform and worked for users.

Once this basic flow was agreed, I used this as a basis for the screens I needed to wireframe.

I created low-fi wireframes to support each step, which used on paper during user feedback sessions.

BUILD

Once findings and improvements from user testing were incorporated, I prepped a visual design.

As this was a more traditional “waterfall” type project rather than Agile, this was handed off to developers with requirements. I participated in regular reviews and collaborated directly with the Development team on various decisions during build.