Jaideep Godara

Deployment of a User Centered Design (UCD) Functional Group (2007)

Client: A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.
Duration: 4 months

The objective of this project was to assess and plan for the client's User-Centered Design (UCD) needs to establish the minimum and necessary processes and resources required to deploy a user centered design (UCD) functional group.

The project had the following three conceptual phases:

Assess:

• Conducting detailed assessments of existing processes and stakeholder groups within the client organization to determine the final plans and prioritizations required to create a UCD Functional Group.

Define:

• Defining and implementing the UCD Functional Group organization structure and processes.
• Defining the marketing and communication plan for introducing the UCD Functional Group within the organization, and creating initial materials associated with this plan.
• Defining a training plan and materials which will allow the client resources to gain proficiency in key UCD activities.
• Providing usability and user interface design standards for design and development teams.

Implement:

• Conducting “In Process” project assessments to determine if and how UCD activities should be incorporated into specified projects already in progress.

Personal Responsibilities included:

• Conducted "In-Progress" project usability reviews (heuristic evaluations) determine if and how UCD activities should be incorporated into the respective projects to enhance their overall usability.
• Developed an Enterprise-wide User Interface Design Standards and Guidelines document to provide usability and user interface design standards and guidelines for design and development teams at the client organization.

Samples deliverables from 'In Progress' project assessments:

Results from Contextual Inquiry with stakeholders

Process Flow chart based on CI results and Domain modeling

Bumps in the Road and Happy Endings
Development of the Design standards and guidelines document was a challenge since there were multiple audience for it: mainly, web developers, and also newly formed UCD team members who needed the more in-depth information as a vehicle for training as well as practice. If made very generic (more of guidelines than standards) then it would have lost appeal to users, such as developers, who only wanted to see the surface, "cook book" stuff. If the document was made too specific with examples (more of standards than guidelines) then people with a need for more in-depth explanations would fine it too vague.

To address these challenges, the document was conceived as a living document which would be eventually converted in a webpage format. The idea was that the document would be much more usable for multiple audiences through the use of layering/progressive disclosure. In addition, the standards would be developed over time as more projects came online with a defined user centered design process and validated their designs. The guiding principle was to always specify which designs were user validated vs. those that were just generic "good practice."

An example of Document Structure for the Standards and Guidelines Document

The level of details in defining specifications - various distances were calculated based on an underlying global grid and the Gestalt principle of 'Closure' was used to create a visual organization.