What do Our Users Need?

Although the issues seemed scattered and unrelated to each other, we were able to isolate two major improvements that could address most of the problems.

Users needed more guidance to help them navigate through all of the product’s features.

Users were confused about where policies are located and how they are applied.

After our first client’s meeting with these findings, we were asked to focus on improving overall product literacy first before attacking policy management.

User Flow

In order to focus on improving overall product literacy and  users’ confidence in each task, we needed to understand whether they were having any issues with the user flow itself. By studying the existing user flow, we hoped to declutter and organize information and increase overall product literacy.

How Can We Address Our Users’ Needs?

Since we have defined the problem and discovered potential solutions, we decided to start wireframing some of our ideas in Figma.

Wireframes

In order to increase users’ confidence in each task, we needed to understand whether they were having any issues with the user flow itself.
By studying the existing user flow, we hoped to declutter and organize information and increase overall product literacy.

GoGuardian team did find the new layout visually attractive, but they didn’t exactly see the new carousel version working better than the old version. However, they have given us a go on the Help feature and combining policy list with OU list.

Usability Testing

After our second meeting with GoGuardian team, we decided to test out our wireframes. Using the screens we have designed, we created a prototype and tested it on Maze.

Insight #1

Although we have solved the problem of cluttered information, we were unable to smoothly introduce the Organizational Unit Tree to new users without giving them a long explanation of each feature.

Insight #2

After making all the changes, we wanted to run another usability test with different groups of people. The result was more promising!

From here, we started designing high-fidelity prototype for GoGuardian team to review and deliver.

What did we deliver? What can we learn?

GoGuardian team was pleased with the result and we handed over our files with our research findings, new components, and 23+ new and improved pages.

Reflection

“A process that is not critically dependent on prototyping is not a UX process.”
Julian Caraulani

Users ranged from IT experts to school teachers. It was very difficult to design something that would be friendly for both types of users. It also took a lot of time to have our users test our prototypes since we couldn’t offer any compensation for taking out their personal time for us.

Due to this project's nature, we could not hold more than two meetings with the client until the final delivery. More feedback would have offered a chance to deliver something that could have been more aligned with what the client was looking for.

Due to security reasons, the GoGuardian team could not give us access to their design systems or their software. Our team was able to watch existing tutorial videos to understand the problem, but it wasn’t enough to really understand the program until further into the project. Every design element had to be created from scratch. This process took away too much of our time and limited our chance to improve the design further.

After wrapping up the project, the client mentioned that developing an interactive infographic like the OU tree would be both time-consuming and expensive. I wish we had the opportunity to inquire whether our design aligns with their budget and adjust our design accordingly.