Portfolio Experience Designer: Design Research, Interaction and Visual Design georgettes.com georgette@georgettes.com 512-362-8078
Innovating Enterprise IT Management Software Description Create a reference design for a legacy application that would reduce calls to tech support and win back market share. Process The project began by developing close partnerships with the program manager and development leader. We completed a heuristic evaluation to document known problems. Reference Design Next I drafted an iterative project plan that included user research, design and testing. The first step was to identify and interview key stakeholders and end users to ensure the new product would match user needs, be technically feasible and viable to the business. With an understanding of the product space and my background in IT enterprise systems I drafted an information architecture. The IA was validated using card sorting in small user focus groups. When the time line for the project collapsed and funding was reduced I adjusted the project plan to ensure successful and timely completion. Group Card Sorting Study As we pushed toward completion I focused on the interface design. I iterated UI sketches and reviews with users before generating high-fidelity wireframes. The high-fidelity wireframe were leveraged to teach the remote implementation team the companies software design language. Work flow sketches for understanding Legacy Management Console Role I completed researcher, design and testing from concept to reference design completion. Outcome Using the research insights and user testing we completed a reference design that met business and users needs. Deliverables Project Plan, Research Plan, Information Architecture, Sketches, Wireframes, High-Fidelity Visual Designs Methods Competitive Analysis, Interviews, Work Flow Diagrams, Task Analysis, Scenario, Use Cases, Sketching, Iterative Design, Wireframes, Visual Compositions, Card Sorting, Focus Groups, Paper Prototyping, Participatory Design
Strategic Design Leadership Transforming my engagement from tactical support to strategic leadership to improve the user experience and development process. Server Management Software My initial product support was to create wireframes for each software release from a marketing requirements document. This type of engagement required me to create wireframes for 80+ user stories that spread across seven development teams. Each team would ask me to create wireframes to incorporate into their behavior specifications. I quickly became a bottle neck in the process and was unable to keep up. I was being asked to wireframe user stories that had not prioritized for release. This created lots of wasted effort and delays. For the following product release I was determined to reduce wasted time and increase my impact on the user experience. I worked with the product owner to move my engagement closer to the front of the process. Helping drive user stories into the marketing requirements document and prioritizing the features that would be included into the next release. I was the only design resource working with a team off 100+ engineers and developers. I was responsible for support from concept to completion across all software releases. By engaging earlier I reduced the number of wireframes from 80+ to less than 25 wireframes. This process eliminated the design bottle neck and ensured that I could focus on the experiences that were most impactful to the majority of end users. Wireframes, research and strategic leadership Understanding business and software development process Mobile Server Management Software Information Architecture
Activity Theory Diagram Persona Hypothesis Final Concept Video Journey Map Proof of Concept Storyboard Virtual Family Social Network Proof of concept of a contextual-aware system to increase family member awareness, engagement, connectivity and organization. This project was a self-driven project into an area of personal interest. After a bit of research I decided to create a systems design to help families stay organized, connected and engaged using contextual-awareness, mobile device and surface computing. To get stakeholder approval I created hypothetical personas, scenarios, a survey and video scenarios to communicate the concept. Working with participant families proved to be difficult to balance with a full-time job, graduate school and my own family. To increase the number of participants I augmented participant observation data with a journal study. During the length of the project used mixed methods to identify themes and represent the subject more completely. Creating activity maps for several families converged the data into a time line representation that could be further compared and identify gaps in the current experience. These gaps provided many areas for design but I settled on designing for homework management, a frequent problem in families. I used paper prototypes to test the design system with families. To represent the design system I created a use case video and presentation. This project was entirely my responsibility from concept to completion including design research and interaction design. Proved that families would buy and use a systems solution that used contextual awareness, surface computing and mobile devices. Presentation, report and proof of concept. Literature Review, Pilot Study, Surveys, Ethnographic Interviews, Storyboards, Scenarios, Video, Diary, Paper Prototypes, Activity Theory, AEIOU, Mental Maps, Experience Maps, Activity Maps, Survey, Persona Hypothesis, Personas, Scenarios, Task Analysis, Literature Review, and Pilot Study.
Activity Therory Diagram eorgette Implemented Design Sprint.com 2.0 Site Update The Sprint.com team tackled the formidable challenge of rebuilding the legacy site. The project was named 2.0 to reflect the evolving social nature of the web. For the discovery and design phase of the project I worked with the creative agency on their implementation of the Sprint design language. In the middle of the design phase the company rebranded which created additional work. As a result several key pages were removed from agency scope and assigned to me for completion. It was my responsibility to ensure that the design of those pages to fit within the experience. I tackled each page by identifying the key business and user objectives. Once the project team agreed that the defined objectives met the business needs I generated conceptual sketches. Final sketches were developed into wireframes that enabled the project owner to better understand each solutions strengths and weakness. Feedback from stakeholders was used to create high fidelity annotated visual designs were handed off to the development team for implementation. As the project lead I worked directly with a cross functional team responsible for directing the agency of record. During the implementation phase I maintained the visual design strategy. The implemented site resulted in an increase in sales, reduction in customer care calls and consistent user experience. Wireframes, Prototypes, Visual Design, Heuristic Project Goal, Objects and Policies, Sketching, Wireframes, Visual Compositions and Assets Legacy Site Page Design Process
Lean Design Testing Create and implement a lean design testing process. When my position transitioned from interaction designer to design researcher I was asked to support 7 product test and research needs. I decided to implement a lean research method for testing product designs to enable me to focus on more strategic research needs. To implement the lean design testing process the interaction design process had to be modified to include testing and iterative design. To get designer buy in we road mapped their known releases and I helped them identify design testing opportunities. This process change also enabled the interaction designers to be active in the testing process and built more genuine user empathy. Team Road Map Exercise I mentored each interaction designer on how to build a light weight participant screener, discussion guide, and moderate user sessions. By structuring each user session with a moderator and note taker the often times long reporting process was shortened to a few days. High level results were available on the teams wiki during the testing process and a complete report with themes was available within a few days. I was responsible changing the UX teams design process from user considered to user centered. I also taught design testing methods to interaction designers. User insights moved into the design process and informed the design before products were developed; reducing the costly changes to implemented software. I was also able to concentrate on leading the product teams with user research. Testing Planning, Discussion Guides, Screeners, and Leadership Lean Design Research Research and Testing Wiki Research and Testing Project Schedule`
User Interface/Interactive Prototype User Work Flow Diagram Password Management System Design a product to help user manage their passwords using magic. The second phase of the project was to evaluate user desirability, technology feasibility and business viability. Initially the team conducted research into available solutions. Each solution was critiqued for strengths and weaknesses. Then we proceeded to interview users in their computing context to better understand password management. Using a iterative cycle of divergent and convergent thinking the team narrowed down onto a design solution that created a security layer that was controlled biometrics. To turn the initial abstract concept into a concrete solution the team used task flows, user survey, storytelling, story boarding and developed a interactive prototype. The prototype was used to test the design solution with users to determine desirability. During the course of this team project I acted primarily as the design researcher. I conducted ethnographic interviews, surveys and research current technology solutions. This information was used by the team to generate personas and a design solution. I also created and tested the interactive prototype as a proof a concept. The results of the project were a scenario based solution that identified that a security layer to manage most passwords desired by users and technologically feasible. Prototype, user testing and presentation User Observations Taxonomy, Task Analysis, Survey, Persona, Scenario, Storyboard, Wireframes, Visual Compositions, and Prototype User Contextual Inquiry Storyboard
Installation and Getting Started for Enterprise Evaluate and direct changes to improve the user experience of an IT enterprise application installation and getting started process. I began the project by experiencing the installation and getting started experiences myself. Because the products target market was educators with little IT experience I could consider myself a valid participant. After several tries and assistance of an experienced IT administrator I was unable to complete the installation and getting started process. User Observations Concerned that my experience was not consistent with the end users I conducted a participant observation study. I watched experienced IT administrators who had worked with similar solutions also fail. The installation and getting started process took nearly four hours which was well beyond their expectations and those of competitors. My next steps were to create an installation and getting started best practices guidelines to guide the team. I researched the limitations and constraints of the enterprise software installation process to ensure the guide was useful and complete. I was responsible for redesigning the installation and getting start experience from research to implementation. During the research I identified a bug in the installation process that created a major error that forced the user to abandon the installation process and start over. The implemented design solutions reduced the length of the installation process by 30%. User Insights, Work Flow Diagrams, and Wireframes Participant Observation and Work Flow Analysis Experience Mapping Experience Map
Healthy Serving Mobile Application Create a product to assist a users in reducing or eliminating a perexisting health risk. Chronic health care research was reviewed and identifying six preventable diseases. Using a skeletal persona to build upon, our team began filling in the details by placing Margo into a dining out situation. Proof of Concept Video The team decided to build a mobile application to help Margo in tracking consumption and selecting healthy dining options. We continued our product development by walking through a single use case and creating a paper prototype that reflected that experience. Subsequent design iterations added use cases until the product was robust yet simple for users. The final step in the project was to create a video based scenario that communicated the potential of the design solution. As the senior student the team decided to appoint me the project lead. My role was to guide the new students through the design thinking process and teach unfamiliar methods while meeting the project challenge. A proof of concept that users found useful, usable and desirable. Paper prototypes and a video based scenario. Body/Brainstorming, Wireframes, Persona, Storyboard, Paper Prototype, Scenario, and Storytelling Annotated Paper Prototype Visual Designed Proof of Concept