Aspire had a long list of user-requested enhancements, new features, incomplete features and UX issues prior to the UI redesign. The plan was to get the most jarring and time-consuming part out of way before moving on to changing, tweaking or enhancing anything with the user experience.
Early 2021, after launching the new UI, we experienced an influx of client requests due to the fact that in the new UI rollout we also opened up the channels of communication to be more easily accessible. After meeting with stakeholders we decided to start our focus on 3 major areas that had needed some TLC even before the new look launched.
Problem: 3 areas and a long list
Okay, so we have the 3 areas we know we want to make UX improvements to and we have a list of previously submitted requests, what next?
Start with the existing list
Utilizing our roadmapping software we filtered through hundreds of requests and pulled the ones related to the 3 areas of focus.
Let attendees add ideas
Our attendees were from the support team folks - the front-lines of user feedback. They were each given an opportunity to add to the existing list.
Categorized and voted on ideas
Once we had a comprehensive list ,we divided it into the areas of focus, then, we divided even further by voting on ideas based on their level of impact and effort.
With the support of our product manager and some help from a select group of internal folks comprised of Aspire Care reps, Client Services Managers and Implementation Managers, we were ready to get started.
Internal Discovery Sessions
After working from home for nearly a year I was an expert at conducting meetings and using white-boarding software to hold workshops to gather the data and feedback we needed.
Explorations
For each section I reached out via questionnaire and interviewed at least 5 users. I set the stage, letting them know we would be focusing on the area they specified in the survey and let them walk me through their experiences and pain points.
Using the white-boarding app I tracked all feedback (positive, negative, and neutral). Later, I added the feedback into a confluence table tagging and looking for patterns.
Patterns into ideas
Knowing that we wanted to focus most on the highest traffic areas we worked with the product team, development and AspireCare to ideate. More whiteboarding exercises focused on stating and brainstorming around problems - old and new.
Details and Prototypes
We chose to really focus on 3 key areas, our scheduling board being one of them. First, we focused on some of the discrepancies between the old UI and the new - things that may have been missed in testing. Then, we focused on performance.
Many users were saying the new UI was a bit slower and while we didn’t have as much control over performance as we would have liked, but we were able to come up with some solutions that solved the performance while also addressing issues from the legacy UI.
Some users have hundreds of routes on their boards
One of the biggest performance-related issues revealed itself when a user had a good amount of routes and visits (the colored cards) on their board. The problem was when the user needed to move visits to a different day/route they would have to scroll far and wait for the page to load.
We created a selection control that allowed them to show and hide routes, removing the space between routes to drag visits.
We also, removed less frequently used options from the top menu making room for the new control and removing some page clutter.
We later presented these designs to users and stakeholders along with the plan to fix a few other board issues and got an overall positive response.
Outcome
Over about a 2-week span, we were able quickly resolve the performance issues and some of the quirky things happening within the third-party control we were using. In addition we added the new route filtering functionality and plan to incorporate the other ideas ove the next few sprints.
While there’s still a good amount of work to be done on this module and the others, we’re working hard toward building a better product for users.
Reflection
We preformed the user tests and gathered feedback during a time when we were still migrating the last of the UI. Due to the timing of this and the nature of user reaction to a redesign, the interviews felt more like customer service calls. Understandably, users wanted to vent about their prior frustrations during beta and point out all the things that may have changed that they were still getting acclimated with.
With that being said we listened to the users and instead of a mindset of enhancing the UX in these key areas (which we still plan to do), we focused on ensuring that the users could preform their daily duties as efficiently as possible. We plan to follow-up once all issues are addressed to get back to the original task - til then we want to make sure it’s working as expected from the legacy UI.