CJN: Content Audit + Usability Audit
Information Architecture • Interaction Design • User Research • Usability
Client: Dakota County Criminal Justice Network
Methods/Skills
Content Design, Heuristic Evaluation, Personas,
Ethnography, User Interviews, Moderated Usability Testing,
Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Wireframing, Rapid Prototyping
Tools
Figma, Sketch, Axure RP
Problem
Needed to increase the usability (specifically the learnability, efficiency, and memorability) of the existing digital platform that 25% of law enforcement officers in the state of Minnesota use to track their cases.
Solution
Combined all elements for assigning and tracking cases into a single UI on one page, so users don't have to jump from page to page just to assign a new case or look up who's doing what.
The Challenge
For this case study, I analyzed the overall usability of the digital platform that 25% of law enforcement officers in the state of Minnesota use to track their cases provided by the Dakota County Criminal Justice Network (CJN). Their organization wants to improve the learnability, efficiency, and memorability of the interface and move closer to having the CJN site as the universal system police officers use to do their work. The main components focused on in my final design were the functionality for tracking investigator's cases, as well as the process for assigning them.
Making Sense of the Chaos
To begin the process of finding a focus for my research I created a sitemap of the current UI to better understand the digital space the officers navigate, and personas to better understand who those officers might be. These methods revealed the current website provides a lot of flexibility for the user, but that it isn't always clear what the best path is to access necessary information. Users have to jump from screen to screen to access case report details in eForms and assign cases back in Case Management, and it seemed prudent to find a more efficient mechanism to accomplish these tasks.
Mapping Things Out
The text elements that are Title Case are the primary navigation links on the site, and the text elements that are UPPERCASE are the secondary navigation links for each primary.
Visualizing the User
Getting Started
The initial design concept for the redesign looked at giving officers the ability to see the overall caseload for their agency on the same screen where cases can be assigned, and the possibility of a "police profile" page to aggregate all assigned cases and tasks into one place.
The Current Interface
Sketch, Sketch, Sketch
Making It Digital
After conducting usability tests and user interviews with two police sergeants at the Dakota County Law Enforcement Center it became apparent that the police profile concept wouldn't be particularly helpful because many police agencies don't utilize the task feature on the current user interface. They instead leave comments on specific cases for investigators and this automatically generates an email to the investigator assigned to complete that task. I chose to move forward with the tracking cases functionality on the Agency Workload page, to streamline the process for assigning cases.
Trying to Be Different
Below are the initial digital iterations of the concept. In the first version, the case number and type of case are listed in the drop-down menu to provide a bird's-eye view of who's doing what, and the second concept moves the task overview below the case overview so there's more visibility for each section and to make the drop-down menu less clunky from a visual standpoint.
Refining the Idea
New Design Concept
Moving Forward
I recommend doing another round of testing with the new Agency Workload concept to see how well it streamlines the process of assigning cases as well as tracking them. In subsequent iterations of the website, there should also be group functionality built into the software so larger police agencies can have quick access to what their teams are working on. This was mentioned numerous times during the first round of usability testing and is very important to the user base.