Cyre Allen - How might we improve search

Introduction:

The International Trade Association aims to continue to develop a strategic way for ITA employees to connect and find each other within the scope of their work. This support for knowledge management, UX and CX is to identify and facilitate integration points within the larger KM conversation and ITA Connect.

A living roadmap document was established at the start of the project to lay down landmarks for this effort.

My Role:

Senior UX Designer

My team at Bixal was awarded this contract for first year and the option year (2nd year) to strategize and deliver a working expertise finder for ITA as an org. Also concurrently to automate a "KM" (knowledge management) toolkit.

Note: the implementation is for the desktop site first as this make sense for this organization as many of it's employees use this site at work.

ITA Roadmap:

This roadmap map was the first deliverable that was developed and presented.

As we were developing this roadmap the needs of ITA Connect was prioritized over the KM toolkit mentioned above.

ITA Roadmap

At this point in the project it became evident that ITA as an organization was not very mature in the ways of user experience. Time was spent making a research plan to present the org to allow them the education that they lacked on the procedures and planning that is a part of the ux experience at the beginning of most projects.

Even though this effort to create ITA Connect was a year into building the product, because of budgeting and funding the project was shelved for a time. When the project was fully funded once more my team that included a knowledge management SME, a Sharepoint developer, UX Designer (myself), and a Database Analyst were tasked with creating and delivering a functional and usable expertise finder for the org.

Research Plan:

A copy of the ux research plan can be found here

With the research plan in place, work was done on creating workshops and design systems/ presentations to increase the ux maturity at this org.

ITA Connect Design System:

ITA as an org is an incredibly siloed system. In the hope of creating a "one ITA" approach we created a ITA Design System inspired by the USWDS system that was created to bring government sites up to date in terms of modernity and or accessibility.

USWDS was created by a team from 18f in 2015 and it has become the gold standard for web design in government spaces (https://designsystem.digital.gov/)

***While this guide has evolved, this is the first iteration and it will continue to evolve further to reflect the needs, wants and ideas specific to ITA. Iconography as a part of the design guide is still being work on. ***

UX Research Findings and Recommendations:

Through a series of SIPOC meetings, we were able to hear first hand from ITA colleagues about their suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs and customers.

Initially ITA employees were finding it difficult to identify what they do and how they do it. But as it was explained it helped them to think deeper and provide points for us to investigate.

At these meetings I was looking to understand the work flow for certain positions within ITA's business units. These meetings help me to create the report from what I found their through personas and journey maps.

Information Architecture workshops:

With IA available it becomes significantly easier to make key decisions for new features and to follow user behavior through multiple processes. With IA user satisfaction is a priority.

The main purpose for these initial IA meeting were to decide what the card view (card view holding employee information) and how links and sub-links would be ordered within ITA Connect.

Four main components were addressed: organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems and searching systems

Information Architecture Miro Board

Next steps:

With the information collected in the IA meetings I took time to synthesize my findings. This lead me to create two versions of the employee card that will be displayed within ITA Connect's search and fill in information on the homepage of ITA Connect.

With this information it gave me more of an understanding of what the subsequent wireframes could look like for the project.

All this time, I have been creating wireframes based on user interviews, informal meetings, personas and the journey maps I created based on ITA and the information that was shared.

Initially a document with requirements were shared based on employee feedback.

Employee card high fidelity wireframes

Scope revision: ITA Central

The KM conversation came back around and the scope of the project changed.

Through a larger discovery report created by the KM SME on the project, there is not a place for ITA employees to take and be updated of the competencies needed to perform roles within ITA.

Through this conversation, on the suggestion of myself, a intranet will be created to hold these important pieces of information that will be known as ITA Central.

This process is currently waiting on a governance board to be put place and for the ownership of the site to be transferred.

ITA Connect Wireframes

On the left of the screen is what the current ITA Connect looks like. The right side reflect the updated ITA Connect based on user interviews and UX research methodologies to create these designs.