Client: Aurelius

Methods/Skills

Content Design, A/B Testing, Kano Model,
Survey Design, Competitive Analysis, Journey Mapping,
Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Wireframing, Rapid Prototyping

Tools

Figma, Sketch, Axure RP

Problem

Needed to decide how to best implement a new feature on an existing website designed to make the process of aggregating research findings and drawing out key insights/takeaways more efficient.

Solution

Focused on making it easy to update a report as new data is added, the ability to see updates from all team members in real time, software that can suggest potential tags/analyze data, and allowing users to export each report as a PDF.

The Great Idea

For this case study, our design team had to explore how to best implement a new feature on an already existing website for a research software company named Aurelius. Their core goal is to create an efficient digital space for user experience designers to aggregate their research and draw out high-level takeaways at an increased rate. The new feature they want to add is called "Collections," which will allow future designers to distribute/present their findings directly from the Aurelius digital platform. We were given a time constraint of 80–160 total developing hours to guide our design process.

Searching for Answers

We started this journey by doing a competitive analysis. Before talking to our client, each member of our team researched potential competitors of Aurelius to identify what baseline functionality had to be present in the next iteration of the site. Then each team member went ahead and made a journey map (mine below) of the user experience navigating the current Aurelius UI to decide what content would be necessary for the new feature. 

Sketching It Out

Each of us also had the opportunity to sketch out 5 possible designs that could be added to Collections. Afterwards we met with one of the founders of Aurelius and he went through each of our ideas, breaking down the development time necessary to make the changes a reality on the site. This was to help us choose which design ideas we wanted to pursue going forward and stay within our time constraint of 160 total developing hours. We also used the Kano Model to analyze 10 potential designs, to further evaluate customer satisfaction with the new feature overall.

Development Time Frame — 132 Total Hours

After careful consideration, I chose 4 designs to move forward with and created annotated wireframes illustrating why I chose those 4. The design ideas I picked were: 

• Collection Groups: This will give users the capability to drag and drop notes, tags, documents, and key insights into a collection from the side navigation bar to easily create an Aurelius report (32 development hours).

• Presentation Collaboration: This functionality allows multiple users to modify a collection/project at the same time and see all changes as they happen in real time, very similar to Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc. (20 development hours).

• Suggested Tags: This provides the ability for Aurelius software to suggest potential tags/analyze data in a collection (60 development hours).

• PDF Report: This will make it easy to export collections as a PDF to send to clients who don't have access to the Aurelius website (20 development hours).

Collection Groups — 32 hours

Final Recommendations

• These proposed modifications will increase the shelf life of research, and provide extended benefits for older insights as new research propels a project.

• For each of these changes, it would be prudent to go heavier rather than lighter. That's why the total development time budget is 132 hours.

• These updates will help build more value when the next iteration of the website is deployed, and users will get closer to Aurelius' overall goal of getting UXers to make sense of information automatically.

• All of these changes are helpful to in-house teams specifically, which is Aurelius' main customer base, but in upcoming iterations, video chat functionality should be considered. People can't always be in the same physical space.