Project: Maxar
Recruited to design a collaboration solution that leverages products, capabilities, and services. We created a Dynamic Collaboration Catalog.
UX & Content Management Strategy
Maxar Technologies acquired MDA, SSL, DigitalGlobe, and Radiant Solutions. As a result, they needed to find a way to share information across all four enterprises. A Maxar Capabilities Catalog was created, but it failed to gain audience adoption. The need for UX/UI and content strategy was clear.
Maxar recruited me to design a digital collaboration solution that identifies and leverages products, capabilities, and services. The catalog would be available internally for all Maxar Enterprises to find inroads to collaboration.
Is user-friendly
Easy adoption into daily work process
Has automatic authentication
Meets security requirements
Has analytics with measurable KPIs
The catalog needed to be an easy to use collaboration tool with a high rate of adoption, provide analytics, and meet security needs.
After reading the defined requirements for the project, I knew that I needed to ensure the principles of Interface Design were applied throughout the recreation of the catalog, including consistency, universal usability, informative feedback, prevent errors, permit easy reversal of actions, keep users in control, and reduce short-term memory load.
UX STRATEGY
Problem
Ease-of-use: Ensuring the collaboration tool was easy-to-use required user-feedback so we didn’t fall into assumptions.
Adoption as part of the work process was key, but finding the right tool can be a challenge. The learning curve must be low and experience with the tool must be high.
Analytics is built into most tools, but security requirements eliminated any tool using 3rd party analytics.
Solution
1. Weekly Stakeholder meeting to ensure goals and concepts stayed on track.
2. Weekly User test of iterations. We used the feedback to drive design.
3. Surveys! We surveyed users on the original catalog to understand what worked and what didn’t. Then we continued to survey prototypes every 6-8 weeks.
5. Lots of tool analysis to ensure security requirements, analytic reports, and KPIs met standards.
Results
User feedback led us to a tool all four enterprises were familiar with: Office 365 (Cloud + SharePoint).
User feedback:
1. Content was easy to navigate and find
2. Content was unique to each section
3. Users liked not having too many clicks to find what they were looking for.
Confluence Prototype – working out catalog navigation structure, content groupings and classifications.
Project tools: journey maps, personas, goals.
Content is key
Curating content from the Maxar enterprises was a key ingredient in the adoption of the catalog. I worked closely with representatives within each enterprise to gather capabilities, products, and services. Next, we ensured the content was organized and easy to find. We couldn’t decide if a “Subject” structure or an “Enterprise > Subject” structure was best. The end goal was to present Maxar as one organization, not four.
We turned to our users for feedback. The overwhelming result was to adopt an “Enterprise > Subject” structure. Although this structure maintains content by enterprise, it meets the “search expectations” users are used to, plus it didn’t require users to learn a new structure.
Introducing the Maxar Cabailities Catalog (MCC)
Dynamic Elements
Dynamic elements became an important part of this catalog. The goal was to have the employees add and update the content. As a result, I built a system where all content had to be classified. These
classifications could be pulled into web parts to ensure content could not be orphaned. This allows the newest and most recently updated content to be promoted.
I also included appropriate web parts in each section of the site to post content that was trending, most recently updated, of the same subject matter, and of the same enterprise. This enabled each page of the site to have unique elements that posted the most important content for that page.
Working within O365 is a shift from the paramid-style of navigation (parent > child, etc.). Web parts and classifications enable simpler navigation but require more up-front analysis on how to define the
navigation. Luckily, this is one of my strongest skills.
With the team, we refined the taxonomies for the navigation to include the most powerful and necessary links in the left-hand navigation, then incorporated a classification system to ensure the web parts pulled in the most appropriate content for each section and
page.
Prototype – working out catalog navigation structure, content groupings and classifications.
UX Toolbox
Here are some UX tools used in the project: goals and personas!