Problem Discovery - Internal
After being onboarded to the project, I was handed my first project. I was to work on the 'People' page, for the upcoming new version of the Council Data Project site. I was to guide the project, collaborating with other UX Designers. The 'People" page was an overview of current and ex council members.
My first port of call was to have a look at the previous version of the site, which was as follows:
It was a simple "card style" list of the current council members and their email addresses. However it was missing many vital details and the overall 'point' of the page was missing after an initial look over. I then spoke with the Project lead, to get an overview of what problems had come up using this version and what his goal was for the outcome of the new version of the People's page and this is what he suggested:
01
There are no options for filters or ability for the user to see any further info.
02
It's very bland, we want something better than just a list of cards
This was a good start for me, as it gave me some indication of what I needed to focus on and improve. I wanted to focus heavily on the user needs, so I decided to brainstorm a list of of priorities and questions that I wanted to begin the user research with. They were:
How might we provide the user what they need from the CDP site?
How might we maintain continuity throughout the CDP site?
How might we make sure the relevant information is clear
How might we make sure the user leaves the site understanding what CDP is?
These were the "How might we"s that I put together after internal discussions towards the realisation of the problem. However these were open to change, as I needed to first conduct some user research.
The user research was handled my one my colleagues, however I assisted and helped in this. We first put together a plan of action:
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Identify who uses The Council Data Project (demographics, age, sex etc)
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What are the goals/What do they want to achieve when using the site?
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What other sites do they use that do a similar thing?
This was our baseline. Obviously we wanted to make sure they were fluid, allowing us to adapt these action plans as maybe common questions or queries came up during our user research.
Problem Discovery - External User Research
The next steps were start external user research. The thing we needed to understand before moving forward with the site redesign, was what users were there to do, what they expected from the site and what problems or difficulties were they encountering on the site.
I first started researching on the internet to discover people's desires and opinions on what they wanted with relation to local councils. I tended to look through blogs, forums and local council groups on social media. This way we could get an early insight into what they were looking for.
Below is a snapshot of just some of the user research I put together via desk research:
Angela
Editor in Chief
Andre
Shop assistant
James
Programming Editor
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Iris
Art Director
"I just want to see what's happening in my council! It's so complicated to understand it all"
"Sometimes I want to know what legalisation has been passed to help people in my community but it's so hard to find"
"I wouldn't even know where to go to look for info on my council... the council website?"
"I once contacted the council for some info on a proposal I'd put forward, never heard back! So out of touch"
Compiling this data and research gave me further ideas on what were the needs or goals of the user, including pain points. The overall pain points were:
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Complicated
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Hard to find
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Don't know where to look
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Out of touch
These pain points needed to be address in the new people's page. Even though my task wasn't to re-design the whole website, the People's page could still be a means for me as UX Designer to address these pain points for the user.
Final outcome after research and design process
Case study to be updated with process and research conducted.