Parul Sharma

Design Lead - 1+ years

This enterprise application was built to coordinate work between three distinct internal teams. Each of the three end user groups had different roles and responsibilities and were scattered throughout the world. While they had different roles, they needed visibility and transparency into what everyone else was doing at all times. I conducted screenthrough walkthroughs, interviews, and discovery phase workshops with end users. I leveraged the existing Material Design styleguide and create lo and hi fidelity wireframes, and managed communication between stakeholders and the developement team.

The Challenge

As a solo designer, it was vital to the project's success that I remained organized and decisive. End users of the application were scattered throughout the world. Planning and conduing a huerstic evaluation, for example, is a lot more difficult when you have to schedule with folks from Manila, Frankfurt, London, and Sunnyvale. Scheduling meetings across 4 timezones, communicating design research findings and executing remote design workshops were all challenges I faced and overcame during this project.

Remote Workshops

Because of the global nature of our project and budget constraints, I adapted our design workshops so that they could be done virtually. Through this method, I aligned four different regions and communication with 7 program managers with minimal business travel costs. Card sorting exercises were done in google slides or MURAL. Huersitic evalutions can be done with a screenshare, and think alouds can be done over hangouts.

Less Flashy More Functional

I learned a lot about how enterprise application design is different than consumer design. The biggest lesson being that your end users have to use your product whether they like it or not. Period. They have to do their job. Because of this, there is more emphasis put on being able to complete tasks efficiently and accurately rather than the visual design.

Transparency is Key

As a design lead, I have made mistakes and have had things backfired. For this project, I originally designed each portal to be different for each end user group. I realized that while they do have different roles and responsibilities, the user groups in enterprise tend to be very cross-functional and need to talk to one another. There was a strong desire from the business to have more transparency and consistency for this reason. A redesign then focused on making the portals for the different groups look more alike, but highlighting relevant information for each group specifically.

Sharpening my Instinct for "Customize for Standardize?"

If you want to automate a process, it means you have to standardize it. This is where you have to work very closely with your business analyst or product manager to make sure the business needs and future business processes are solidified. There were times where instead of standardizing I was asked to make certain features customizable. For example, if the roles for each of the user groups were more solidified, each table would be filtered be default. Because no standardization could be decided on, a customized filter widget was built. One major pain point for end users was having to reset filters every time they visited the dashboard. To accommodate the user needs and satisfy the business needs, a ‘saved filter’ widget was design was proposed and built. Working on this product for over a year helped me gain an intuition for deciding when to customize and when to standardize. I learned to ask the right questions about product vision and future scope make sound design decisions and mitigate technical debt.