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Ontario Digital Service Project | 3 months | Remote Research |
Ontario Digital Service Project | 3 months | Remote Research |
Methodologies and Artefacts:
Affinity Diagram
Market Analysis
Problem Statement
Prototypes
Sketching
Stakeholder Workshop
Usability test
User Needs
In this project we started with an idea and turned it into a tangible interface within three months. We began with a poorly defined problem space (design an emergency volunteer portal). To narrow this space, we strategized with our clients to identify the scope of the project within the short and rapidly changing timelines for the project. The scope of the project involved developing a high level information architecture and interactivity of two portals; a volunteer facing portal and volunteer-organisation facing portal. Our clients also wanted us to put specific focus on building out a volunteer training portion for the volunteer facing portal. Then, we conducted secondary and primary user research to identify user needs for the portals and translate needs to functionalities. Our deliverable prototypes were informed by market research, hybrid interview usability-tests, sketching sessions and client consultation. This project was interesting to me because it involved a degree of political sensitivity, was fast moving and had very open-ended needs. It was also important and special to me because it focused on increasing emergency response capacity in Ontario, a capacity shown to be lacking in 2020's COVID-19 environment.
Some of the aspects of my role included:
Client Request: Build an emergency volunteer portal.
Course of action: Run a scoping workshop. Find out what it means to build an emergency volunteer portal.
We started by asking:
The portal was identified as a project in response to Ontario’s 2020 budgetary commitment to harnessing the skills and goodwill of Ontarians to respond to emergencies across the province. Our client team had conducted extensive research and engaged with over 90 members from the emergency sector, including municipalities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations (NFPs), First Nations organizations and emergency management associations to explore challenges and opportunities the sector faces when it comes to engaging volunteers in emergencies. The results of this engagement identified that volunteer organisations needed a way to manage
Output: Validated problem statement (user, problem, need)
How might we create an avenue for organizations needing volunteers (NGOs, NFPs, Municipalities) to train, recruit and deploy volunteers in emergency situations?
Our scoping workshop also involved talking about user groups, demographic targets and identified needs based on past research and expert stakeholder knowledge. We talked about prospective volunteers, registered volunteers, high-school students, indigenous peoples, and mobile users as requiring specific focus. Each of these groups would have specific needs relating to their user journey (see “Remote Indigenous Community Needs” below).
Miro board used to document user groups, demographic targets and identified needs.
Given our validated problem statement and identified needs, we estimated the number of users that needed to be user tested with once we had a functional prototype. Our next steps were to affinity diagram all of the needs we came up with and identify patterns and actions to centre pages of a potential prototype around. We also looked at other platforms in the market to see how they were meeting the needs of users.
The Miro board used to affinity diagram identified user needs.
Next, we did a market analysis to see how other emergency response platforms were meeting the needs of users.
Miro containing some of the boards with market analysis. We looked at pros, cons and key aspects of existing applicable interfaces.
Based on this analysis, we sketched out the major screens for a volunteer organization-facing portal.
Sketches of major screens involved in portal flows (volunteer availability screens left, account creation right). Made based on user needs affinity diagrams.
Sketching the major screens of the portal also launched a process of mapping out user flows associated with major screens.
Output: Rapid market analysis, sketches and user flow creation lead to the development of prototypes.
Due to the fast paced nature of this project, the team had started building out a few screens using bootstrap (login, home page). Our prototypes included improved versions of the screens they gave us. The changes we made to existing screens were minor, but essential for improving usability. We also prototyped parts of the flows that were not in development yet.
Improved prototypes (right) of screens developed with bootstrap (left) incorporated minor but essential changes like left aligned text and buttons to decrease cognitive load.
We also prototyped parts of the flows that were not in development yet.
Prototypes developed for the volunteer facing portal. These screens were part of mobile and web flows for training modules.
Our volunteer training prototypes were made to facilitate learning for users with different learning types, accessibility needs and were created to look similar to other learning platforms so that users could rely on pre-established mental models. Our volunteer-organization prototypes were made to look similar to job posting websites and other volunteer posting websites, but, they also included screens with functionality specific to the needs of a volunteer-organization. For example, one of our screens included a data visualization of how many volunteers are available to respond to an emergency for an organization at any given time.
Prototypes developed for the volunteer-organization facing portal. These screens include account creation, dashboards, volunteer lists, posting functionalities and contact screens.
The prototypes were partially interactive and designed to follow the Ontario Design system (which I helped develop, case study pending). The last part of this process involved usability testing the prototypes we created. We created a user research plan to outline the usability testing goals and process, ran our usability tests and synthesized our findings for a report back.
Portions of the user research plan and usability test facilitator guide.
We usability tested the volunteer training prototypes with prospective volunteers of different experience levels, ages and niche skills (ex. Has worked in remote indigenous regions, is CPR certified, can drive etc). We also made sure to target recruitment at high school students because they represent a huge untapped market for volunteers. High school students in Ontario are required to complete 40 hours of volunteer work to receive their diploma when graduating.
The volunteer-organisation prototypes were tested with staff from organisations needing volunteers (NGOs, NFPs, Municipalities). Our usability tests were designed to be generative and evaluative. We asked organisation staff about their background in emergency response, recruitment processes and then had them walk through the prototype and give us feedback. We did hybrid interview-usability testing to understand the backgrounds of the people we engaged with. Their feedback was captured in Miro.
The Miro board used to note-take usability tests, notes and quotes were typed on different color stickers.
Final Steps: Synthesize usability test data, develop improved prototypes
Output: Report-back of insights, prototypes handoff
Some of the behavioural insights we learned from testing the volunteer portal included:
The last few iterations we made to prototypes were based on the output of these insights. They involved changes like adding time estimates for how long a course would take to finish and clarifying how questions are asked so that volunteers can share more about themselves.
Our handoff to the client team involved the user research plan, iterated prototypes and synthesized findings from usability tests.