Invasive Species are plants and animals that are not native to the ecosystem we live in. Their introduction and spread could bring huge damage to human body and economy.
The Inter-Ministry Invasive Species Working Group at the BC Government has a need for a toolkit to support Invasive Species Reporting, Response and Management in the Province of British Columbia.
Identify the key pain points to solve within the research phase
There has been a web application for managing Invasive Plants in place for 8 years. A lot of problems have been reported by the users. One of the critical desired outcomes for the research phase is a high-level user story map to facilitate the design and development of the MVP.
At the beginning of each project, we usually have a set of common questions in mind. ‘What’s the problem we are trying to solve?’ ‘Who are the primary personas?’ ’What’s the problem with the current solution?’ etc. After the first couple of meetings, we might have answers to some questions. But most questions remains unresolved.
The objective of the research phase (or pre-discovery for Agile Development) is to clear out the uncertainties and confusions about the user, product and project.
Start with the questions I have
I experienced the same process for this project. I didn’t have the domain expertise on Invasive Species and their management process. As soon as I realized there were a lot of areas remaining unknown to me, I started with noting down all the questions I had in mind as the starting point.
Plan out the approach to find the answers
“The planning phase is all about understanding what you have been asked to do and working out the best combination of activities that give you the outcome you need, within the time, budgetary and resource constraints of the project.”
Jesmond Allen & James Chudley, Smashing UX Design: Foundations for Designing Online User Experiences
Given the time we had for this project, I did a UX research plan proposal in the second week outlining the activities we could do to find the answers for the questions we had in mind.
In our case, I had planned to do
- An internal stakeholder workshop to understand the user groups and the process we assumed;
- 1:1 interviews talking to the actual users to understand the experience;
- A scoping session to define the solutions we want to provide;
1-hour stakeholder workshop to define the user groups
“The planning phase is all about understanding what you have been asked to do and working out the best combination of activities that give you the outcome you need, within the time, budgetary and resource constraints of the project.”
A: Why not ask your stakeholders first?
On January 16, I facilitated an internal stakeholder workshop to gather information about the current user group and workflow.
We started with brainstorming on what the current procedures for Invasive Species management are, identifying people involved at different stages, and then prioritizing their importance to the new program.
1:1 User Interviews to deep dive into their workflows, needs and pain points
After collecting the user representatives’ contact information for different roles, I started to schedule 1:1 interviews.
The objectives for the interviews were to validate the assumptions about Invasive Species procedures I collected during the stakeholder workshop. I also wanted to understand the pain points and problems that different user groups had within the current system.
Workflow, workflow, workflow
Comprehending the users’ job responsibilities and workflows is the key to enterprise application design. Especially for Government projects, there might be workflows around defining the policy & regulation involved. We would need to take this process into considerations when defining the user requirements.
Dissatisfactions, frustrations and pain points
After talking to 10+ user representatives, I separated them into 3 different user groups based on their primary interest.
I used Persona to document the insights and findings from these behaviour interviews. The pain point section are critical to the design and development of the new program.
Scoping meeting to define the gaps we want to bridge
After the interview stage, I have facilitated multiple scoping meetings with the product owner and the project team to do user story mapping exercises to get buy-ins and define the new application requirement.
After the interview stage, I have facilitated multiple scoping meetings with the product owner and the project team to do user story mapping exercises to get buy-ins and define the new application requirement.
What's next?
