Primary Activities
User Research, Need Analysis, Card Sorting, Wireframes
Prototype
Team
Lead UX Designer, Product Manager, Technical Architect
My Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
About
Max Management System is a dashboard design which I did for my client for their users. This dashboard intends to provide their users a comprehensive view of various metrics required to improve growth and profitability of an organization. I worked closely with the client to gain domain knowledge and understand terms like resource cost, attrition, diversity, utilization and how these metrices are important for any company.
How it Started
Max Management team required a dashboard capable to show key performance indicators to company's leadership so that they could make informed decisions. When the team approached me, they had clear desire for a dashboard but lacked the knowledge of how to create a user friendly dashboard. The team had created one dashboard, but they thought it was not intuitive and user friendly. Therefore they wanted a user eXperience expert to help them with it.
They also provided me with the initial design of their dashboard, which they had developed within their team. While I really liked the concept of the metric management dashboard but I observed lot of room for improvement.
My Initial Thoughts...
Research Phase
I started with initial research to learn more about the business metrics and the resources which are already available in public domain. As their are leaders in every company, I was lucky to find people who would use this system easily. I met with my end users face-to face and talked to others on the phone.
One challenge I identified was that there was lot of operational data. Since I was new to the domain and was still learning, it was difficult for me to determine the most important key metrics necessary for the company's growth and profitability.
I then decided to conduct a workshop with the team to uncover any hidden challenges and to bring out innovative solutions.
I then conducted some user interviews because it was very important for my project as managing any organization is complex task and everyone had different priorities and duties.
By end of the workshop I was able to identify the key metrics which was important for our users to reach their business goals.
User Interviews
To gather more qualitative data about our potential user's motivations, pain points, and needs, I interviewed 4 company employees of different job grades. These all participants were highly engaged in company's business and fall under our target customer demographic company leadership. With these interviews, I also wanted to understand how they interact with current dashboard and what are their expectations from the new one.
Research Analysis
After thoroughly analyzing all the feedback and conducting some competitive analysis, it became evident that Max Management required a significant redesign. Some challenges were found after user interviews and workshops. Few are highlighted here
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Users needed easily digestible information
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There was lot of operational data which lacked hierarchy.
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No emphasis on important information.
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No clear distinguish between interactive and read only data.
Because I knew that turning data into useful information would be tough, therefore decided to focus on a few important pieces of data one at a time, that would be really helpful for the users. Followed "divide and rule" policy, breaking down the data into smaller, more manageable chunks to make it easier to understand and work with.
Data Division Framework
I made a plan to separate the important data from the less important data. Our users were from three different levels of jobs: regular staff, leaders, and senior leaders. My idea was to show them a big picture view of the metrics (like looking at everything from a bird's eye view), while also letting them dig deeper into the important details (like getting to the core of the information) if they wanted to.
Conducted two more sessions with the team to deeply understand the categorization of metrics. We categorized metrics into three buckets: Must-have, Good-to have, and Can have. Also decided to reduce the scope for first phase due to the overwhelming amount of operational data. By segregating the data, it became more manageable and organized.
Design
Wireframing
Once I knew what the problem was, I started thinking of ideas. I wanted to make a dashboard that anyone, even if they were new to the platform, could understand easily. While I was drawing out the plans, I kept talking to the development team to know what we could and couldn't do.
While working on the design I made sure for the following keypoints:
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All essential information is immediately accessible.
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Data is prioritized.
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Information is displayed clearly in a visual hierarchy.
Challenges
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My first challenge was that the platform where the dashboard had to be created only allowed for a limited graphic components.
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My second challenge was since the team already had a dashboard which they were using for some time now, I need to make a design keeping current user behavior in mind.
Working on UI Design
I found the 3 graphs that can improve the way we show information. The followings are
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The line graph to show diversity year on year.
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The bar graph to show headcount of employee’s year on year
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The pie chart to show geographical distribution of employees in three countries.
Diversity YoY
Included line graph to understand diversity trend year on year from year 2022 to current
Employee Experience
Graphical representation of employee experience gave a clear picture of employee satisfaction score
Geographical Distribution
Doughnut Chart representing distribution of employees across three countries.
Diversity
Our dashboard will give detailed information regarding organizational diversity as it is identified as one of the core value. It will give users an overview of organizational diversity at high level, while also enabling them to drill down to each country if required.
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User can access information for three countries and have option to select any one individually if desired.
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Can see the diversity at department level
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Has ability to view diversity within each function of department.
Headcount
Headcount page will give information about employees in each department. It will also give information about
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Number of employees and segregation of male and female.
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Three year trend
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A list of departments sorted based on their respective strengths
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Sub-functions and the respective employee counts within each sub-function
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Head of department and department performance
Conclusion
As mentioned earlier in this project, I had to deal with vast operational data. However, I found satisfaction in receiving high praise from senior leadership for my designs, which resolved many of their concerns. I gladly accommodated their minor feedback and change requests. The scope of this project is huge and there are still many open questions which we need to work on as a team.