Although I am NOT permitted to show you some of the deliverables I produced, I can explain to you the process and the reasoning behind my design thinking decisions.
Design Philosophy
The Item and Release Application enables state farm employees to use the intranet to search different types of forms at various stages of development. The first thing to be established was the project, user and business purpose and goals.
Project Purpose: To reformat and align the web page migration from VB to J2EE environment.
Project Goals
- To review use cases and document emerging patterns and begin to optimizes page structures.
- Work flow presentation of the interface design specialist to fellow team members.
Project Purpose: To build a bridge between the interface design specialist (IDS), project planners, project managers business analysts. onsite database developers, and Offshore(India) Java Developers
Project Goals
- To have an iterative work process that feeds off the documents produce by the IDS person.
- To provide additional knowledge to team members to help streamline their document content.
User Purpose: To optimize employees workflow so the application can deliver an output that is efficient, effective and bring satisfaction.
User Goals:
- To align current employees metal models with the current applications flows and content.
- To reduce frustration levels by following best form practices.
Business Purpose: To position this application to align with State Farm's modified style guide and streamlining application direction.
Business Goals
- Showcase this as part of a suite of applications that will represent State Farm's new application direction.
- Use it as an human resources selling point" Come work for us, we have the applications that are custom built for our employees."
Deliverables Foundation
Wireframes and User Interface Specification document are the two main documents produced. I used Luke Wroblewski Web Form Design book not only as a guideline to assist me in restructuring the Item and Release Application's forms but as a validating point for my form restructuring decisions.
After receiving sample tasks from the business analyst team and walking through the application in addition to talking to a subject matter expert (SME), I determined chapter 10 and 7 Unnecessary Inputs and Help Text are the best reference point to use.
The concept of chapter 10 and how it relates to the main problems we were facing centers around these four areas:
- Removing questions
- Smart defaults
- Personalized defaults
- Best practices
Many of the meetings centered on why certain information was in the form and if we really needed it. Using State Farm style guidelines combined with best form practices was how form structure was implemented.
Sustainability Issues: (Discussed not implemented)
Question asked to team members: What is the "value" in this search?
- Saved Searches: Having the ability to saved searches not only will help with being more efficient and effective, but implementing the ability to "share" searches will tie into the social and crowdsourcing problem solving avenue.
- Distribution: Email directly from application or have contents of search "prefilled" in default email.
- Instant message searches(intranet)
- Wiki for favorite searches for a particular deparment or task (pattern library of sorts)