UX DESIGN / UI DESIGN
How can we make common employee requests more accessible and interactive, while maintaining information security?
While on a UX Design contract with Infusion (now Avanade), I assisted the team by designing an interactive digital experience for corporate employees at RBC. The "Virtual Concierge" is a 24" touchscreen kiosk, located within RBC corporate buildings, that offers employees the following services:
My involvement in the project was to:
I came into this project in phase two. Unfortunately there were no documented UI or UX notes or resources for me to reference. However, phase one had produced a prototype of the product - a kiosk was installed at one of the RBC office locations. I was able to visit and interact with the device on multiple occasions. I had access to the back-end admin system and could see the information architecture of it (which I later documented). As well, the design team had created some lo-fidelity mockups of different front-end sections of the application, so I was able to draw on those for additional user flow information. And finally, a detailed list of user stories was available.
After being briefed on the project, I reviewed all the resources available from the previous phase to fully understand what the current state of the product was and where we needed to go next. I leveraged both technical and creative resources to gain as much insight as I could. My goals became clear:
We had multiple types of users for this product, each with different levels of permissions. Making sure our user stories were well thought-out before spending time wireframing the flows in Axure, was a key component to the success of this project.
I collaborated with the Senior Architect to flush out the users stories. We would sketch the flow of a story on a whiteboard and discuss it out loud. We were able to edit existing stories to be more precise - sometimes dividing one story into two, and also adding new ones.
This step played a big time-saving role in creating the UI because we were thinking ahead to possible situations that our variety of users may encounter and talking those scenarios through before doing the actual work of a hi-fidelity wireframed flow. This step also resulted in a more thought-out experience for the users.
Now that I had a clear vision of what the flow of many screens needed to be, I was able to create the wireframes for them using Axure. I presented the wireframes in weekly meetings with our client. I would go over a specific section of the interface at a time, as to not overwhelm them with information, and also to ensure that "A" was on the right path before proceeding to "B".
This process worked out really well for all of us. I received a lot of positive feedback during these meetings, which made me confident we were heading in the right direction. We were able to discuss any issues or concerns in a timely manner, and I would note any changes or considerations that were needed for the next meeting. This method allowed us to quickly iterate through to the final approval of 48 flows for both the front, and back-end of the product.
After each meeting, I would share my notes with the visual designer in case he had any feedback to contribute. Since the next part of this would involve his efforts, I wanted to make sure we weren't missing any vital considerations.
As an admin, I want the ability to specify a set of different background videos or images on the kiosk so that I can better tailor the experience to the location of the kiosk (e.g. Calgary vs. Toronto)
As a content author, I want to enter details for an event through the admin portal so that I can add events for a specific kiosk, a group of kiosks, or globally.
As a stakeholder, I want to be able to export user feedback as a report so that I can review and organize feedback in Excel.
As a user, I want the system to populate the email address when I swipe my access card so that I can save time while composing emails.
After all the rounds of feedback and iterating on the wireframes, I was able to communicate all the final changes to the visual designer. We had productive conversations about how the front-end of the application needed to function, and together we worked out the final graphics with very little iterating.
After delivering my portion of this project on time, and on budget, the Avenade team has moved on to development, and will then carry out its quality assurance testing on the product. Upon completion, the "Virtual Concierge" touchscreen experience will be implemented in corporate RBC locations across Canada.
"Cindy does exactly what good UX needs; she puts the user first and caters to delivering the best possible experience. Ultra-flexible and easy going, Cindy delivers great work on time and on budget. I look forward to working with her again!"
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Bryan Cook
Application Architect @ Avanade
© 2019 Cindy Clarke