UX Designer at Commonwealth, 2018 - 2022. I owned design projects for a CMS website builder, including user research, UX writing, UI design, and prototyping.
Background
Commonwealth is an RIA-Broker/Dealer helping financial advisors build their business by offering a wide array of solutions. One solution is a website platform for advisors to create a personalized website that reinforces their brand identity.
Project goal
Discover how to reduce company time spent on helping platform users complete tasks and improve user retention.
Empower users to update their website without having to wait for help from the support team.
Problems
How might we better communicate the information users have access to so their experience is less frustrating and saves time?
The website platform has a support team with many people requesting help to complete the same handful of website updates. People can make these updates and access help guides from the platform's dashboard. However, it seems they do not know that.
Finding the problem came from empirical data of my own. Time and time again, I saw the same questions raised. Before moving forward with a proposed solution, I had to confirm the problem and narrow in on the specifics.
Research
I started this project by collecting the requests the support team receives from the platform users. The team has a ticketing system with archived information, so gathering and analyzing data was quick.
Data collection findings
About 15% of user requests were related to information accessible from the platform dashboard. A couple of typical requests involved questions like:
"Why aren't the changes I made published to the live site?"
"How do I see my draft site?"
User interview findings
- Information users need to accomplish their objectives is not effectively placed on the dashboard.
- Users did not know the level of information they had access to because they didn't explore the dashboard.
- Users were unaware of the help guides accessible from the dashboard.
- Users ignore information unrelated to their primary goal when entering the platform; to update their website.
If we apply a robust hierarchy, grouping methods, and color psychology to the UI, users will better understand the information they have at their fingertips.
Ideation
Creating a hierarchy
Based on the data I collected during my research, I color-coded the information on the dashboard that's most to least important to user goals.
- Red = most important
- Purple = somewhat important
- Green = least important
As you can see from the screenshot above, important information is scattered all over the dashboard.
Wireframe
I took the color-coded scribble and sketched a low-fidelity mock with the colors still applied. This visualization method is a personal preference. It helps me organize information even when there isn't a lot. This method also helps in communicating intent to stakeholders.
I also went back to my research to collect users' vocabulary when describing the dashboard. I applied their vocab to the final product under the assumption that more recognizable words would help users in their keyword-skimming efforts.
Result
