Project Details

My Role:

Sponsor
Product Designer
UI/UX Designer

Tools Used:

Sketch
Invision

Project Space:

Web
Android
iOS

UX Processes I Utilized:

Affinity Mapping, Competitive Analysis, MoSCoW Prioritization,
Tree Testing, Interviews, Site Mapping, Lo & Hi Fidelity Mockups, Annotated Wireframes, Road Map Prioritization

Challenge

Construction is one of the few Industry to actually lose productivity in the last 60 years
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A tradition bound industry culture.
Construction has a reputation for being notoriously slow in experimentation, with a "don't fix it if it ain't broke" attitude. Recently new softwares like ProCorp have slowly started to be used.

Complicated communication Networks. With multi million dollar projects,  schedules with hundreds of tasks, and projects that bring together internal employees and contractors there is a high room for error.

Chance to improve productivity. Project scheduling software is mainly seen as providing value to management and occasionally by project managers. Many of the tasks of schedulers or project controllers, getting information from the project team and updated the project schedule can easily be automated.

Passion Project. The above video shows the completed project before the redesign. Working as a PM consultant for PG&E I developed this enterprise software with wireframes, developed a scope of work and reached MVP with an outsource team in Chandigarh India. The decision to launch the  redesign was twofold. So I could communicate requirements with dev teams more effectively and a formal UX redesign that integrated user feedback creating a better product .

Sketches

Synthesizing research

User Interviews

Research was drawn from 50 responses from a company survey request as well as six in person interviews conducted in a free format allowing the researcher to guide the conversation. Once the interview was completed their comments were divided into colored posted notes based on ideas, and pain points. These were then divided among the softwares that they were in reference to.

"“Its easy to learn, at least, that's what I tell my overwhelmed students” -P6 Trainer
Key Insights
  • Interviewees were almost all experienced in Microsoft Project and Oracle’s Primavera 6 scheduling software.
  • Those who were experienced in P6 were positive about its use as a PM software despite commenting on its bad UI
  • Microsoft was generally seen as less valuable by schedulers, despite it giving a better high-level overview
Unexpected Feedback
  • Much of the praise for P6 was in regards to its resource management abilities. However, this system does not connect to the primary financial management system and users would have to enter data into multiple systems.

Persona

Luke Chan

Age:                30
Occupation:  Project Manager
Salary:         110k
Location:     Sacramento

Bio

Luke has spent two years as a Project Management consultant after completing an MBA he also has a degree in engineering from UC Berkley. Luke has worked for several years in construction as an engineer for Pepco, a utility company in the company before moving to California where he has begun work as a junior PM for a major commercial construction company and after 11 months has just received his first promotion.

Desires
  • Flexible working hours
  • Provide value to his team
  • Looking to 'prove' himself
Pain Points
  • Doesn’t have time for bad UI
  • Has to work in multiple back office systems
  • Keeping his senior stakeholders informed has started to take up most of his time
  • Office is understaffed resulting in     no work life balance
“I want to spend my time managing the project, not the PM Software”
Competition

+ Low barriers to entry
+ Diverse reports
+ Current market leader


- Only allows % complete updates
- Seen as less serious software

+ Multiple features for complicated projects
+Complex Portfolio Managment +Dedicated users

- Requires dedicated staff to update
- High barrier to entry
- installation based model

+ Good UI
+ Cloud based
+ Construction focused


- Does not use traditional gantt charts

Determine Priorites

Unexpected Result
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A wide array of testing was used - Synthesizing interviews in an affinity map revealed a large degree of overlap with other systems that we were not expecting.

tree testing - showed a wide degree of views of where updates should be placed in the program. To address these issues the user goal was reworked to provide more clarity. Resulting in greater certainty when placing task and milestone updates.

Now next later - Several challenges were encountered while shifting to the development stage. Project management turnover and delays resulted in constant scope negotiation. For the redesign I made the choice to use the 'now next later' chart to break down what was needed to reach MVP.


User Flow

Annotated Mockups

Original Site Structure
Revised Site Structure

Annotated Mockups

Annotations
1) leads to menu                                                                8) Leads to schedule change panel
2) Leads to projects list panel                                            8a) Takes to delayed number of days
3) Leads to project panel                                                   8b) Takes to ahead of schedule
4) Leads to Project log                                                       9) Leads to resource change panel
5) Leads to alerts panel                                                     10) Upload picture
6) Leads to settings                                                            11) Lead to update error                                        
7a) Leads to Update Lists                                                  12) Enter hours, dropdown
7b) If no updates go to blank state                                     13) Enter hours, Manual

Lessons Learned

This redesign of SP Ecosystems companion app resulted in an improved application that integrated iOS and Android style guides. Update errors were constant occurrence with the previous system. By 'locking' updates that had dependencies this issue was solved.

Speaking with users also highlighted additional areas that the web program could also improve on such as providing CSV file download and uploads.