bringing art to the people
Creating a platform that brings local art to a wider audience.
client
role
tools
methods
An established Employee Assistance Program provider in Sydney
UX Consultant
Sketch, Invision, Mural, Slack, Google Docs, Illustrator
Existing platform evaluation, stakeholder workshops, experience research, competitor research and analysis, card sorting, flows, lo-fi sketching, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing
summary & problem
Our corporate health client had built a web browser platform on Wordpress to help its client organisations promote psychological wellbeing amongst their employees. Employees could login to a portal, undertake learning and consume wellbeing material. Any wellbeing content that HR managers wanted to promote to their employees was entered manually into Wordpress by our client’s offices. All sales to new client companies and employee psychologist appointments were also handled manually.
We were commissioned to build a new version of this experience that expanded beyond an employee learning portal and included:
- sales process automation
- an HR managers' portal
- a portal for psychologists
- a new employee portal with added appointment booking and telehealth features
My role as UX Consultant was to research and design all experiences for our three user groups, produce and test prototypes and hand UX deliverables over to the UI designer.
evaluation of existing platforms
To assist the client in increasing counselling bookings driven by their online platforms, I evaluated the existing platforms in order to make recommendations for changes that improved conversion rates. I delivered a report of my analysis and sketches of the changes I was recommending. I liaised with the client’s Wellbeing Project Advisor in the process of implementing those changes.
establishing voice and tone
I assisted the Design Lead in conducting branding workshops and contributed to the production of branding deliverables in order to help the client better define a tone and voice for their ongoing digital transformation. As the client had not been engaged in a branding process since initially going digital, this was instrumental for their product going forward. As part of my role, I then followed these guides to create content as needed for the new platforms.
mvp features
I came on to this project at the start of sprint 1, after an initial discovery phase had been undertaken by the agency. The first thing we did was run an MVP framework matrix workshop with the client to prioritise the features that we would be scheduling into the first 10 sprints. The idea was that there would also be developers onboard that we could consult at this time and throughout the process. However, this was not the case as the client decided not to continue with their overseas devs so we had to make educated guesses about feature size and level of difficulty in order to allocate between two and four features every two sprints.
design sprints
I worked in fast-paced 6 day sprints in order to create all UX deliverables for the MVP of a new digital product consisting of web browser and native app experiences over a period of 3 months. The plan was that during this time the Design Lead and myself would work as a team on feature ideation and development. The limited amount of time afforded in the short sprints, however, resulted in me managing and producing the project’s UX.
feature research
Because I had not been involved in the initial discovery phase, I conducted research on client competitors as well as potential tech and design solutions for each new feature and created design research boards on Mural prior to ideation in order to inform my process. I also referenced empathy and journey maps created by the Design Lead during the initial discovery phase in order to solve the needs and pain points of our three user groups: HR managers, employees and counsellors. As there was no dev input during the sprints, I often had to tackle difficult tech problems on my own. One example of this was finding the appropriate calendar integration solution to suit our client’s needs and understanding how this would then be translated into a seamless experience.
stakeholder workshops
As part of the sprint process, I also lead stakeholder workshops and meetings at the start and end of each sprint in order to ensure product alignment with client business goals. These meetings routinely included our client company’s CEO and the Wellbeing Project Advisor, amongst other client team members. Tying business logic to experience ideation was a priority in my designs.
information architecture
I conducted card sorting sessions in order to better define different aspects of the product’s architecture. I sketched experiences and gained input from the Design Lead where possible prior to designing digital wireframes and architecture flows using Sketch. I then transformed digital wireframes into interactive prototypes using InVision Craft in order to show progress to our client and conduct user testing.
user testing
As a part of each sprint, I created comprehensive interview guides and scenarios for user testing in order to ensure homogeneity in the data we collected. The client wanted to keep all testing in-house so our participants consisted of psychologists and other employees from their offices. I lead regular 1 hour user testing sessions of my interactive prototypes with 3-5 participants per each, depending on client availability, in order to iterate my designs prior to UI handoff.
iteration
I then synthesised and analysed user testing data in order to gain insight into the users' experience of each sprint's features. I used these insights to devise recommendations for changes to improve each feature and decided on which changes to implement. I then modified the prototype accordingly.
ui handoff
The nature of the short sprints was such that there was no possibility for repeat testing and UI handoff happened after one iteration. As part of my role I also handed over to the UI designer and worked closely with her to ensure that she was also able to make due progress.
to sum it up
I particularly enjoyed watching each individual feature take form and come to life with the UI design and loved working alongside the UI designer, to make this happen.
User testing is one of my favourite aspects of UX. Each sprint I looked forward to implementing testing insights and seeing how features evolved as a result.
Although it was often a challenge not to have a dev team onboard during our design sprints, I enjoyed researching technology to find the best solutions for our client and their users.
challenges
Building User Trust
Because users received access to the native app experience through their employers, a portion of users inevitably suspected that their mental health information would be shared with their employer.
To solve this, we incorporated three messages throughout the onboarding process reassuring users that their information would not be shared. Nevertheless, a small cohort of participants still did not trust the platform. This cohort either did not read any of the three privacy messages or read them but remained suspicious resulting in them not registering with their work email.
If we did not get people to sign up using their work email, how would the system identify which employer they were registering under?
We considered providing employees with a code but decided against this as the code was more likely to be shared with other people and had the potential to be used by someone other than the employee receiving it.
We overcame this by probing further into this small cohort’s thinking process and understanding that they would in fact eventually use the product once their peers had signed up and expressed feelings of safety.
Six Day Sprints
Once the dust settled after the first couple of sprints, it became apparent that each new sprint required:
- 1.5 days of research and stakeholder workshopping, as only some of the features had been very roughly defined during the initial pre-sprint discovery phase.
- 1.5 days for ideation and sketching
- 1-2 day for wireframing and creating an interactive prototype
- 2 days for user testing (set up by the client)
- 1 day to compile research and make recommendations.
This left no time to make changes to the prototype before the next sprint or for UI handoff, as well as no space for unforeseen issues to arise as part of the process. As a result, I worked A LOT of overtime to keep the project on track and meet deadlines.
In actuality, a minimum of seven days of fast-paced work were needed to complete the sprint cycle.
Remote Work
Covid-19 lockdowns were imposed during the fourth week of the project and we switched from workshopping on the walls of an office and running face to face meetings and stakeholder workshops to finding ways of recreating similar experiences remotely. We overcame this challenge by using applications such as Mural, Slack, Zoom and Google Hangouts... and having a lot of patience with technology.
Absence of Guidance
For a variety of reasons, the Design Lead was mostly unavailable to participate in the sprint process. I learned A LOT on the fly and got very creative to find the support I needed to make the design process iterative and to help the project run smoothly for our stakeholders, user testing participants and the UI designer. In doing so, I built strong relationships with the UI designer and with my other points of contact. I also discovered and implemented new ways of communicating that placed focus on working efficiently as team and on creating the best possible results for our client.
I learned
- how to work in fast paced UX design sprints to an MVP deadline
- about designing onboarding processes, telehealth, booking systems, analytics and system customisations
- the art of speedy wireframing in Sketch
- about grid systems and designing from a mobile first perspective
- about hierarchies in user interface design
- how to write for UX
- the importance of feedback in an iterative design process and how labour intensive the absence of it can be
- how to find support within my network
- how to work closely with a UI designer and became an ace at running stakeholders workshops
- communication strategies that promote productivity
other work
medical device testing
patient owned medical records
