MY ROLE
Product Designer — Redesign, Information Architecture, Prototyping, Interaction Design, UX Research
THE TEAM
Team of 3 designers and project manager working alongside USDA's team of developers.
TIMELINE
February 2023 - May 2023.
Set to launch by December.
OVERVIEW
In the spring of 2023, I had the unforgettable opportunity of working with USDA as a product designer.
The NAMP Platform had last been updated before I was even born— an update was well overdue. I collaborated closely with internal developer teams and stakeholders, meeting weekly for hour each. In the last 2 weeks of the project, I was the sole designer responsible for design systems & hi-fidelity prototypes.
We presented the project to a cohort of 20 executives including the CIO leadership team at USDA and was subsequently recognized with the letter of high praise.
CONTEXT
WHAT IS NAMP?
NAMP platform is used by all 30,000+ USDA
employees
USDA employees must use NAMP as the sole platform for project management. All project funding and documentation must be submitted through NAMP.
$1
Billion
In 2022, NAMP platform was used to handle over a billion dollars in funding from over 150 national forests
NAMP platform is mandated by the PMIAA law and needs to be continuously updated to meet legislative requirements
Despite the legal requirement and its importance,
the USDA struggles to get users to work within the platform
Why is that?
ꜜ
PROBLEM STATEMENT
New and field-oriented staff grapple with considerable learning obstacles, leading to regular miscommunication and imbalanced task allocation. Moreover, experienced users also encounter inefficiencies stemming from the platform's design and procedural flaws. How might we refine NAMP to accommodate both novice and experienced users, ensuring a streamlined, efficient, and user-friendly experience?
BREAKDOWN OF THE PROBLEM
🐳 Breaks when scaled up to large volumes
The NAMP platform couldn't manage large data volumes, which is becoming the norm with the newly enacted law.
🤔 Complicated workflows with almost no IA in place
Most experiences over time became a kitchen sink of complex controls, with abstruse jargon in its copywriting.
🌲 Absence of hierarchy
The platform's overreliance of tabs for accessing detailed information hinders intuitive navigation and obscures content prioritization.
🖥 Dated user interface
The NAMP platform followed dated UI paradigms from an old tech stack, with critical usability issues.
OVERVIEW OF THE OLD EXPERIENCE
USER RESEARCH
To further investigate and confirm the problem, I conducted ten 40-50 minute interviews with different users and stakeholders.
WHAT IS NAMP?
Through these interviews, we gained insight into client-specific information and research, supplanted limited access to the application, and highlighted how users approach platform.
SYNTHESIZING RESEARCH
Affinity Mapping allows our team to collaboratively organize the info we received from user interviews and meaningfully analyze common themes in order to uncover key insights.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Our most significant finding was the pronounced disparity between the experienced and the inexperienced.
Most interviewees, with 10+ years of experience in NAMP are comfortable with the platform but recognize its complexity and overwhelming nature for others.
Other interviewees with no NAMP familiarity avoid the system entirely, leading to a significant task burden on the few experienced individuals and resulting in data gaps from the field.
Many interviewees pinpointed inaccuracy (of calculated costs), lack of editability, and disorganization as pain points.
All interviewees are eager to help their coworkers and subordinates learn how to use NAMP and realize how NAMP is important for USFS.
USER PERSONA
Consolidating our key insights into 2 personas.
APPROACHING A SOLUTION
Leveraging our key findings and persona attributes, our team devised a three-step redesign process:
Our team devised a three-step redesign process:
focusing on analyzing the current user workflow, then optimizing it, so that the design implementation reflects the new workflow. Central to our approach was the belief that an effective solution pivots on a well-structured system architecture.
Design Goals
The research also helped us define our focus areas for the redesign.
Flexible
NAMP should seamlessly adapt to variable levels of information density across different user responsibilities.
Simple
Clean out the clutter, and help users easily complete their tasks
Coherent
Focusing on workflows rather than silos of information.
USERFLOW
Through detailed mapping of the current user journey, we set the stage for optimizing the workflow with streamlined steps.
SYSTEM ARCHICTECTURE
Consideration for our persona's context directed a user flow focusing on intuitive hierarchy.
Our team devised a three-step redesign process:
While prioritizing hierarchy and intuitiveness, we ensured minimal disruption for superusers familiar with the existing layout.
KEY TAKEAWAY
⚒️ Project-Task Hierarchy
- Tasks are nested exclusively within their associated project such that to access is restricted to a project selection first then task selection second flow
- Additional Tasks not categorizable into routes, rec sites, etc. are hierarchically placed on the same level as other tasks, as they are all nested within a project
🗂️ Task-to-Task Organization
- All tasks nested within the same project are accessible to view from the current task page to facilitate for a task-focused experience
- A navigation bar on the side of the screen enables for users’ quick and easy access to other tabs and pages
LOW-FI FIDELITY
Building a low-fidelity prototype to conduct usability tests
USER RESEARCH
5 rounds of moderated tests informed iterations that helped refocus hierarchy and navigation.
Our team devised a three-step redesign process:
We asked the participants to complete several scenarios and observed their movement patterns, mental models and ability to complete their goals. Through multiple rounds of feedback, we were able to implement key feedback into our low-fidelity prototypes.
