Value optimization
Value optimization is a web-based app that streamlines communication between different levels in organizations to maximize the productivity and profitability of projects.
Business objectives
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Impact
Each project ranged from 2 million to 100 million. It was essential to see how global projects were progressing at scale.
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Visibility
When projects were behind schedule, it needed to be visible to frontline contributors, project managers, portfolio leads, and executives.
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Accountability
Escalations could be brought up as needed to ensure entire regions were performing according to the projected project plans.
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Value
Value optimization focused on understanding how decisions either increased or decreased value over time.
User personas
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1: Study specialists
Their role was to interact with teams to identify opportunities to add project value at every phase and forecast decision impacts on project
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2: Portfolio Lead
This type of leader would oversee 10-20 projects, and they in turn would need to see that project managers were adhering to timelines and budgets.
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3: Executive leaders
Executives wanted to be able to see at any moment how different regions were performing around the world for high level visibility into global team performance.
UX Research
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User interviews
For ux research, I interviewed 10 different portfolio managers across Canada, Chile, Australia to understand the role they had as well as their issues with the app itself. Using this information, I was able to map out the personas, and user needs, problem statements, and desired outcome for each other's respective personas.The user interviews were conducted in English or Spanish, depending on the geography of the user.
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Visibility
In addition to 1:1 end user interviews, I asked study specialists to identify the known issues of the app. This direct output from study specialists allowed me to see where specifically the app had issues. I created an affinity map and empathy map to identify and organize usability issues. I cross referenced that with severity and frequency of this information with the known UI issue to help prioritizing the issues to fix inside the app in a UX design roadmap.
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Heuristic analysis
From the heuristic evaluation process, I could see that there were times the app would not close despite having an exit icon, it would freeze, it would take a long time to load, it was not intuitive to filter through hundreds of projects, and it required a lot of manual data entry, there was no export mechanism, and there were no collaboration features to work with external contractors who contributed at different project phases.
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UX Field Roadmap
I constructed a ux field road map to map out the essential features that deliver high value high impact to give better end user experiences and also improve communication and information transmitted between different levels inside of the organization regarding project success and progress. I collaborated with the product owner to ensure the user stories pertaining to UX design where logged into JIRA to keep track of essential UX work.
App challenges
Movable UI
The app UI could be dragged accidentally if the user clicks on a UI element, making the interaction unstable.
No search filters
There were no search filters which meant that users only had the option to search in alphabetical order which was tedious.
No information tips
The study specialists would often have to lean on more experienced users to troubleshoot the data entry parts.
Incorrect values
The app columns would introduce conflicting values which required troubleshooting to sort out and recalculate.
Time-consuming
After entering lots of data, study specialists would have to copy and paste sections to use in reporting to leaders.
No notifications
Portfolio leads would need to manually notify study specialists about project updates, instead of in automated way.
Design process
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Wireframes
Wireframes helped me to map out the layout with crucial components in place.
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Mockups
Using the design system of the company, I was able to quickly transform those wireframes into mock-ups.
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User feedback
With mockups in hand, I had the opportunity to go back multiple times with the end users to get feedback.
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User evaluation
Each round of feedback aligned the product with what users needed to maximize their workday productivity.
Product improvements
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Stable UI
The UI was made static within the app so that essential UI elements could not be dragged across the page.
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Search filters
Beyond alpabetical order, people could search by name, region, project size, or see recently interacted with.
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Resources
Tooltips, worksheets, and essential resources were now available inside of the app to have a central place.
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Error prevention
With pre-made fields for entering data, users could not accidentally alter formulas. This led to greater accuracy.
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Report compilation
Reports could be created inside the app, then exported as a PDF to share with portfolio leads or executives.
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Notifications
Study specialists could receive notifications on to do list items. Portfolio leads saved effort on follow up.
Study specialist data visualization
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Project costs
This visualization at a glance made it easier to compare project costs vs project savings.
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Cost categories
This data visualization gave a breakdown of how fund would be used in the project.
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Value added
This showed how much value was added based on team decisions throughout project phases.
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Saving goal
This gave study specialists a target to move towards as they optimized for project value.
Study Specialists had an intuitive dashboard where they could enter report findings, conduct studies, check resources, and quantify their contribution impact.
Portfolio Leads could see if projects were on time and escalate issues as needed to ensure that projects could maximize value while also staying on time and budget.
Executives could see how entire regions across the world were performing to stay informed at a high level.