Project-based Workflow
January - February 2023
Project Overview
Users of this real estate platform use it to a great extent to (1) place orders and (2) deliver listings (media content) to their customers. Currently, however, those workflows are kept separate, when, at the end of the day, they are related. This project involves exploring potential concepts to improve users' workflow surrounding order creation and media delivery. While the project was put on pause due to limited resources, many steps were taken to explore the problem space, users' interactions with both of these flows, and different potential solutions.
My Role
My responsibilities included user interviews, project scope definition, IA mapping, user flow mapping, and wireframing.
Exploring the Problem & Current Workflows
In order to undertake this massive systemic shift of two main user workflows, I started out understanding the various pages and key tasks that are available to users when they go to complete an order and when they go to create and upload media to a given listing. Some of the relevant findings from this process included:
Many of the tasks are interconnected
When detailing the actions for each workflow, I realized that elements from the order creation workflow are applicable and influence the tasks available in the listing flow. When users choose to create a listing from an order, much of the information from the order already prefills the listing, such as the property address, the customers, and the type of media content to be delivered. By merging the two flows, we would be able to keep this information in one place reducing the amount of clicks and information overload that users may encounter when having to switch between workflows.
Not being able to create new orders or appointments within the listing workflow
A key element that is missing from the listing flow is being able to quickly add orders and/or appointments. This is particularly important for customers whose vendors had to reschedule their service or appointment or who decided to add on a service. Another issue that stems from this is not being able to reschedule or postpone appointments from the listing page, which, based on statistics pulled from our SQL database, occur frequently. Currently, users are not able to do so on the listing page, which disrupts the workflow they're currently in.
Key tasks and IA for the order creation and listing creation flows as well as the points where they're interconnected
In order to better understand how users experience the current order and listing flows, hI conducted user interviews to understand how users enter the order creation and listing creation flows on a daily basis. From there, I wanted to learn about any issues that may stand in the way of the order creation and listing creation flows being seamless. In particular, I wanted to note any improvements the users would like to see, ways to reduce cognitive load, and at which points in the order and listing flows users derive the most value. This would enable me to identify key actions within each flow that help them accomplish what they need to do as creators.
To accomplish the aforementioned, I set up two-part task-based interviews, where I asked users (1) how they would go about placing orders for their customers and (2) how they would go about adding and delivering media to their customers.
Interview highlight reel regarding the listing creation flow
After my user interviews, I decided to create user persons and map out the key steps that users were taking to create orders and deliver media content. My reasons for doing so were to be more intentional with who the user types are that would be affected by this flow (users who use the system for orders only, orders and delivering content, or just media delivery) and track their journey based on the interview tasks that I asked users to guide me through.
Post-Interview: User Personas & User Journey Mapping
User personas that came out of the interviews I conducted to learn about how users enter and move through the current order creation and listing deliver flows.
User journey flows based on user interviews & user personas
Knowing that the merging of the order flow and the listing flow would necessitate a single page experience, I started out by looking at the project edit flow to understand (1) how we want to group content on the project edit page and (2) how we want to name the said group. I asked several people on the team to participate and, from there, we created a unified IA system.
Card Sorting Exercise to Establish Best IA
Following user persona creation and user journey mapping and including the feedback from the card sorting exercise above, I set out to experiment with some wireframe flows for (1) editing a project workflow and (2) creating a project. The project edit flow was prioritized due to being more involved and containing more steps.
Wireframing: Project Edit Workflow
Wireframes exploring certain aspects of the edit project process, such as creating/editing orders and appointments and uploading media.
After having some general ideas regarding the project edit workflow, I started to look more closely at the IA for creating a project. To start I looked at all the entry points that users would be able to access the project creation flow. This made me realize that certain entry points would pre-fill certain information on the project and all entry points aside from the main "create project" CTA flow would enable users the option to select to edit previously created projects.
IA mapping and key actions for the create project flow, emphasizing entry points and the information that the relevant information that would be available from various entry points.
Once the IA mapping was iterated upon and revised with my team, I tried out several different wireframes mainly relating to how the project would be created - in a modal UI, step-by-step form fashion, or an accordion style. At this point, I also started to look for inspiration by looking at competitor grid structures and noting which UI styles could be used for the purposes of this project.
Wireframing: Project Creation Workflow
Wireframes exploring different layouts for the create project flow. Wireframes with stars represent the direction that the team was most intrigued in pursuing.
Exploration of different grid layouts with pros and cons for each.
While this project was put on hold, indefinitely, due to limited engineering bandwidth and a reprioritization of design projects, there are several areas which I would continue pursuing. Firstly, I would prototype the wireframe flows to see if this general structure and flow would make sense for the users. Next, I would regroup with my team and review interview insights and based off of those, either go back to wireframing if more structural changes were required or pursue higher fidelity mockups if the general consensus was that users found the experience intuitive and cohesive. Depending on further testing results of the mockups, I would keep iterating on the feedback and working hand-in-hand with developers to ensure the product was both working as intended and visually in line with the design.
Project Note & Reflections
