Background:
Employees of different backgrounds need to track their project status using this platform.
Pain Points:
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Users are set in their ways but not satisfied with their experience when it comes to the legacy system.
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Different business units have different needs from the said product.
Solution:
I designed a dashboard that’s suitable for all types of business units.
Duration:
2 Months
My Role:
I worked as a sole UX designer collaborating with business and development teams.
Key Takeaways:
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Legacy applications can't deviate completely from what users are familiar with.
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Internal facing applications must not take too much development time and effort.
First question- WHY?
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The initial short brief given to me that I needed to design a dashboard for the client's legacy project tracking system.
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I needed to understand why we needed a dashboard? What current issues that the users are facing, that can be solved by design of this dashboard?
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To find out answers, I conducted listening tours and contextual inquiry with the business team, who were also the potential users of the product.
Getting to Know the Existing Product
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Next step was to understand what is the existing legacy system and what purpose it serves for its users.
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For more specific requirement gathering Internal stakeholder reviews were performed.
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I performed product research by using the system myself and studying documentation and material that was available from my employer.
Fragment of Existing System
Who Are the Users?
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The intended user group of the product was already well defined. It was the project managers, business teams, product owners, team leads, etc.
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They belong to different business units, have different technical abilities and professional backgrounds.
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I conducted user interviews to understand what were their problems that needed to be solved by the dashboard.
What Are the
Current Pain Points?
Insights from the requirement capturing phase revealed following pain points that the users were facing:
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Currently users need to look at multiple values in different locations and then calculate if the project is in gain or loss, which is the most crucial piece of information that needs to be conveyed by the desired product (dashboard).
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A variety of complex financial matrices are contained within the current system. Navigating to them is currently time consuming.
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Users belonging to different business units need to use this product.
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Design Solutions
Pain Point Solution: Easy Access to Gain/Loss Metrics
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During user interviews it was discovered that it's crucial for users to quickly understand whether a particular project is in gain or loss state.
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I had several internal stakeholder review sessions with the business team to understand which combinations of financial matrices are used to calculate gain/loss. Based on the information provided, I created a few rapid mock-ups of visuals that would work and quickly had them evaluated through heuristic review sessions as well as task analysis+A/B testing at different stages.
low fidelity rapid mockup options
Final Version of the design
Pain Point Solution: Saving Navigation Time
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My first step towards solving this issue was to understand which ones were the most crucial matrices that were accessed most frequently by the users and used by all business units.
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Once this information was gathered I started to create low fidelity mock-ups of how said information will be laid out in the most "discoverable" way.
Layout options
Pain Point Solution: Catering to Different User Bases
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Some metrics were not applicable to all business units and the design needed to make that clear.
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Due to development restrictions, options such as login based view, business unit based view, etc. could not be considered.
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Finally I came up with a solution of using color coded on-hover tooltips wherever necessary for users belonging to different business units.
Visual Design
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Since the legacy system already exists, I needed to follow it’s styling.
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But the dashboard is going to be one of the main features of the system. I upgraded & modernise it’s visual appeal while staying true to the original branding.
Color pallete options
Designing with Development Based Restrictions
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It’s an internal facing product, a limited amount of development time and resources are allocated to it.
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I considered certain UI elements as they were more aesthetically pleasing or optimal design solutions.
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But due to dev. restrictions I had to find combination of reusable elements to represent the same data.
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Constantly collaborating with the developers was key to finding the right balance.
Usability Testing
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I performed frequent task analysis with intended users at every stage.
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I conducted A/B testing for the Gain/Loss metrics as it had the most design complications.
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At the end, focus group sessions were performed by the team with members from all 3 business units.
Final Outcome
Conclusion
At the end of this project, I delivered a dashboard design that caters to business and development teams affiliated with all business units within the firm. The design is light-weight from development point of view.