Category
Customer
Postion
UX Research & UI Design
US Space Force, Delta 10FDS
UX Product Designer
Continuous Research methodology provided structure and guidance for developing a community of practitioners embracing shared responsibilities.
Inaccurate data and out dated procedures are significant obstacles for mission and range operation preparations. Addressing these issue by sharing data access to eliminate information silos missing a key part of knowledge transfer, the community of practitioners to that solve real problems and then form standards and best practices through sharing feedback and incrementally improving workflows to achieve the desired outcomes.
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​Research activities identified obstacles preventing community engagement allowing design workshops to develop and iterate on process improvements improving user satisfaction and reduce hesitation for adopting solution into current workflows.
Disclaimer: Due to government security and NDA, I am not able to disclose unpublicized details about this project.
The nature of this work is confidential, and per DoD compliance, the case study contains fictionalized data and omits project details. The case study presents a summary of my experience and design process.
Project Overview
Challenge
The challenges encountered revolve around a launched product that didn’t consider User Experience (UX) a priority and produced an MVP with a vague understanding of the targeted audience, known issues, and procedure requirements resulting in sparse documentation, unclear success metrics, and low user engagement.
Responsibilities
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As the Product Designer, I collaborated with stakeholders, project managers, experts, colleagues, and others to develop an UX Roadmap prioritizing parallel research and development objectives to improve the application’s functionality and usability to improve user retention.
I coordinated sprints for design/ development prioritizing requested capabilities, platform updates for improved performance, and research extensions to augment platform limitations.
I synthesized interviews, secondary research, and audit results to define roadmap projections, ROI metrics, and developed a style guide to meet compliance standards.
User Research
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Continuous research and design iterations
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Stakeholder and user workshops
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Service Design: User Ecosystem Maps
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Service Design: Community Engage
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Off the shelf software capabilities
User Interface Design
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Information Architecture
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Design System Wireframes
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Components and process integration
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Brand and UI style guide
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Rapid testing and prototyping
Design Process
Process for Success
Utilizing transdisciplinary design to better understand the root problem and knowledge domain, which integrates multiple perspectives, disciplines, and communities to generate diverse solutions that move the entire system forward.
Continuous Improvement
No rigid structure: experimental mindset to utilize tools to valid concepts and move projects forward. Our adaptable process pivots to changing business and user needs through incremental changes that test concepts and validate solutions to complex issues. We collect ongoing feedback through routine meetings, design reviews, and service desk requests to identify trends, analyze responses, and then develop concepts to overcome operator frustrations.
Future Scouting: Defining Expectations
Vision, Mission, and Goals
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Compiled colleague’s discussion about MVP purpose into an elevator pitch
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Examined pitches with vision and mission conversation to develop goals
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Socialized concepts to identify targeted user base and develop project champion
Discovery, Audits, Design Evaluation
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Interviewed stakeholders and department heads, collecting perspectives and vision for MVP
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Established secondary research to understand the goals of MVP launch, compile best practices, and set expectations for the community of practice
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Conducted a document audit and aligned findings with backlogged technical capabilities, limitations, and known issues
Status Quo
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Examine the current state of the MPV and the project’s status by auditing and evaluating sprint projections
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Defined project efforts into four categories:
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Project Management, Backend Development, Frontend Development(Wiki 1.0), and UX Design(Wiki 2.0)
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Performed an Unstructured Cognitive Walkthrough with SME, revealing usability issues and engagement concerns
Project Mangement: UX Roadmap
Grassroots effort to Community of Practice
Parallel efforts to improve current wiki version 1.0 through backend and frontend incremental improvements influencing research and design iterations for wiki 2.0.
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Roadmap: Parallel Efforts
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Project Management - Improvement Plans and Brand
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Backend Development - Pipeline integration
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Frontend Development - UI improvements for Wiki 1.0
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UX Design - Research and design iterations for Wiki 2.0
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UX Roadmap: Visualizing parallel efforts to fix current issues and address future design obstacles
Brand and Style Guides
Conducted A strategy for parallel efforts is to establish community engagement by socializing capabilities and providing needed features.
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Brand Identity
Establish brand identity by socializing purpose, value, and real-world benefits through use cases that champion a shared knowledge repository. -
​Style Guide
Establish style guides for typography, color schemes, and visual motifs to establish foundations for implementing the Codex Design system.
Branding: Establish authenticity and trust while providing insight into content speciality
Excerpt: Friendly conversational manor, infused with a quirky, informative tone of voice
Development (Wiki 1.0)
Mindset, Functionality
Reframe mindset to “Now and Generational” incremental improvements. Define Wiki 1.0 objectives as UI Improvements and Wiki 2.0 objectives as UX Design Iterations.
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Reframing Expectations
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MVP Progress incorporates feedback and adapts to user needs and desired features
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Platform is transitioning from a File System to a Knowledge Repository
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Authoritative Publishing is developing Collaborative Community Practitioners
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UX Design (Wiki 2.0)
Concept Refinement
Conducted guerrilla usability testing, collected feedback on critical usability issues, and synthesized results.
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Audit for platform features, ease of implementation, and intuitive interface
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Created design iterations for the Global Navigation, Footer, and Template Layouts.
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Reviewed obstacles for platform tasks (process and procedures) and user journey (workflow)
Wiki 1.0 - focusing on platform improvements benefitting all user roles and tasks
Wiki 2.0 - focusing on usability enhancements improving read-ability, scan-ability, and find-ability through visual hierarchy and proximity
Transition Brief
Before leaving the project, I compiled material for the new design lead, providing an overview of the project's goals, progress, and potential next design tasks.
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Review and refine documentation in Confluence and update the archive platform.
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Debrief leadership and team on current efforts, progress, and subsequent actions.
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Created onboarding memos for past achievements, current efforts, and future recommendations
What I Learned
Continuous Research solves complex problems by seeking collaborators across a shared domain to map and understand how the system works and then address relevant problems. While design progress is not linear, there is structure to provide guidance allowing parallel efforts and iterations to explore and merge into solutions.
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Solving the problem of information silos has already been done, the real challenge is understanding user hesitation for transitioning to a new optimal solution.
Benefit: allows design to solve technical and processing obstacles improving user satisfaction which increase user adoption and retention.
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Embrace incremental improvements through continuous research for task optimization.
Benefit: Efficiency is not always a user issue, sometimes it is a procedure or technology limitation. Focusing on incremental helps identify where the root cause issue originated.
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Defining success and measurements is an adaptable process, it is okay to change prioritizes
Benefit: allows ROI metrics to create boundaries and change as new user behavior is observed and additional user needs are discovered
