Soon after getting deeper into the work with the team I discovered there was a serious lack of shared, common vision about what to build, how to approach it and where we were heading. This made it difficult for both business stakeholders and product team to make decisions and move forward to build a new concept and solution.
A user reference group was set up at an early stage in the process and members were regularly involved in feedback session regarding the progress of the work. But after participating in a few of these I realized they were set up as mere one-way information sessions, communicating the teams progress, but leaving little room for feedback, nor enticing participation from the participants. Thus the value of involving users in these session got lost in the process.
As the team had long requested a UX designer to help them out I was welcomed with open arms. But I quickly realized that the teams expectations were more in line with the skills of a Figma Jockey than a UX designer as a part of the Product Trio. This created tension and friction as the detailed UI designs stories they were expecting would set me vasting valuable time on passive operational tasks, while research and concept delivery work would suffer and fail to move forward. Another approach was needed.
In order to amend the lack of common vision I took on the responsibility of developing a new concept proposal in Figma - including all major areas and functionalities.
Doing this made it easier to discuss and identify flaws and gaps we needed to amend.
This also made it possible to test assumptions and theories in order to understand how to proceed with the work ahead.
By rearranging the recipe for our user workshops and interaction with our reference group, applying a focus on enticing inquiry and open ended questions, helped gain more valid feedback from end users and ignite their participation. In this way we could secure concept validation and achieve true user participation in our project and thus increase our possibilities to succeed with creating a better solution.
By applying a simplified user story definition approach by using sketchy hand drawn wireframes, existing general UI guidelines and focusing on reusing patterns already available we were able to enhance agility and dramatically lower time for making concepts and solutions. We also revised routines and DOD (Definition Of Done) which further simplified and aligned the process, improved flow, removed friction and increased alignment within the team about where we were heading. In this way we could reserve more hours for research and concept development instead of pouring it into detailed UI spec's or prototypes.
By using a collapsible panel for the total budget, and leaving the part exhibiting the total sum visible when collapsed, made it easier for the user to view how details in a separate budget affected the Total budget. In addition the users could also move between the sub-budgets instantly using arrows on each side of the sub-budget sheet.
The admin part with user manager and setup of budgets were redesigned totally and set up according to a Wizard flow which vastly simplified management of users and budgets.
1. The old projects settings view
2. Sketches for User rights - settings
3. Figma prototype for the project setup wizard
As I left the project in march 2023 - taking on a the position as UX Team Lead at B3 Grit - the work with finalizing the work with the BoP project was far from done. How ever my efforts in the project had broken the stalemate and paved the way forward by identifying and manage some major hurdles that previously had hampered the project to evolve.
Above all, my work had resulted in an overall concept idea for the solution that took care of several issues that the current solution did not adress.
One of these pain points was the inability to get an overview of how different sub-budgets affected the total budget. We solved this by creating a collapsible panel for the Total budget, leaving a small part of the panel visible when collapsed, thus making the total budget sum available all the time.
This feature also helped users understand how changes for individual costs affected the whole budget, which made it easier to forecast and balance budgets.
In addition, the users could also move between budgets instantly by using the arrows situated on each side of the budget sheets.
Creating a tangible prototype of the full concept, clarifying how different parts of the budget related to each other, helped the team and stakeholders build a shared common picture of what to build.
It also made it easier to communicate with users and conceptually test and confirm that our observations and assumptions were correct.
Put together with the new approach for workshops and testing - creating an open ended space for interaction and inquiry - this vitalized the feedback and concept validation process, which further increased progress in the project forward.