Overview - One Project, Four Users
The project designed a user-friendly, internet-accessible, searchable, private/public platform for the documents/forms and data that housing providers, agencies and tenants are required to submit relating to rent-controlled housing accommodations.
The client relies heavily on paper forms to manage its tenant rent-controlled housing program. Over 315K properties are offered for rent and approximately 20 paper forms are required for users of the current system.
The Client
The client is a large east coast government agency focused on affordable housing and community development. This project is protected under NDA. Client names and certain details are being withheld.
Goal
Project Goal: Design a database with four users access points that collect and manage all government regulated forms. The four user include: tenants, landlords, administrative users, public.
My Goal: Design a simplified user experience and a streamlined end-to-end service delivery for each system user.
Outcome
Over fifteen workflows were designed and built for all users of the database. The initial goal included API integration with other systems, but these added considerable delay and eventually, the project pivoted to redesign some workflows around manually entered data.
My Contribution
I led weeks of grueling workshops through the service design process.
During QA and testing, I identified many software issues that led to fixes and meaningful UX usability improvements.
As project manager, I created a formal process of requirements gathering and acceptance, change management, engineering task creation and tracking.
As service designer, my input led to the creation of multiple new internal workflows with automation and in most cases completely eliminated the use of paper.
My Role
Project manager, service designer, experience designer, systems trainer, subject matter expert
Project manager, service designer, experience designer, systems trainer, subject matter expert
Methodology
Agile, User Human Centered Design
Agile, User Human Centered Design
Process
Ongoing zoom workshops, in-depth interviews, rapid ideation and prototyping
Ongoing zoom workshops, in-depth interviews, rapid ideation and prototyping
Skills
Research, project management, collaboration, adaptability, meticulous attention to detail
Research, project management, collaboration, adaptability, meticulous attention to detail
Deliverables
Prototype, light service design blueprint(s)
Prototype, light service design blueprint(s)
Tools
Figma, Sketch, Teams, Photoshop
Figma, Sketch, Teams, Photoshop
Year
2021-2023
2021-2023
Research
Due to massive size of this multi-year project, research was conducted and managed via Agile Methodologies for design and iterative (rapid) prototyping and releases. Each two-week sprint included research, design, engineering, service design and UX.
I led weekly design workshops (of seven or more stakeholders) where I meticulously collected requirements. I spent considerable time writing use cases and all of the information was translated into rough mockups and later formally accepted by the client.
Prototype
I worked quickly to produce service design concepts, UX designs and prototyping.
Communicating the service orchestration was at times the most difficult due to the many moving parts including employees (administrator, manager, clerk), security, regulations, internal and external existing technology, new proposed technology and other government agencies. Often my ideas were constrained by time, budget, regulations and technology limitations.
Sometimes I presented powerpoint slides to show new internal workflows using both existing and new technology. Other times, I used rough mock-ups with more detail.
Challenges/Key Learnings
Government agencies sometimes do not willingly work together especially when data sharing. Aligning agency goals is a rarity, resulting in challenges when collaborating on significant projects and insufficient funding for unaligned objectives. This ultimately became a roadblock that the team could not solve and a pivot was necessary.
I meticulously tracked weekly rounds of feedback and how these details translated to daily/weekly deliverables. This turned out to be very helpful when the project went on a 3 month hiatus. The key learning from this example is to document and organize as much as possible.
Additionally, I played many roles on this project and while I excel at wearing many hats, when the client asked to separate the billing by role, this was a challenge.
