Psychology Duckling Database
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
- Information Architecture
- User Experience Design
- User Interface Design
- User Research
Tools
- WAVE Accessibility Evaluation
- Adobe XD
- Google Forms
GOALS
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Improve orientation, discoverability, and performance efficiency within the application.
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Preserve notes and contact history with subjects while maintaining the ability to add and edit records.
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Group records in a way that researchers can easily manage family records and maintain connections in the system.
My Role
As the UI/UX designer on a web services team, my duty was to build a theme and style guide from scratch and test the system’s usability. For this project, I worked alongside the Product Owner in creating requirements and establishing workflows for tasks, such as adding new subject and guardian records, creating families through linking records, and managing allocations and record contact history. I was tasked with designing the flags system and error messaging, maintaining the user interface for the database, and setting up points for user feedback. Afterwards, I ran a diary study post-launch to support usability review, and Phase 2 planning and feature prioritization.
database design
First, we needed to identify the information which was vital to the database, as the original database was extremely outdated, and housed an abnormally large, complex information architecture. We came across issues such as the filters on the older system being extensive but not encompassing vital elements (i.e. filtering flags), slow database performance, and wayfinding difficulties with all records appearing at the same level, regarless of being children or parents.
For administrators, there needed to be a way to properly identify and display subjects ready for allocation versus those barred from allocation due to flags. The developers built an administration dashboard that allowed admins to manage subject records, guardian records, and allocations. Within subject management, stakeholders discussed the need for being able to manage records by flags. We instituted the ability for administrators to archive and unarchive records, as well as filter their subjects list by flag types.
After interviews with researchers and stakeholders, the team realized that the navigation would be the biggest change in the new system. The implementation of a new navigation system allowed researchers and administrators to add subjects and manage locations without interfering with key subject and guardian data.
Recategorizing the data structure so children’s records as “families” was critical to the design, as the families were traversed through sidebar navigation. Due to the criticality of this data connection, the record’s detail interface went through many phases of design.
Diary Study Details
RUNTIME
January 6 – 17, 2020
AUDIENCE
Researchers and administrators that maintain subjects, and manage subject and guardian notes within research allocations.
RESPONSES
20 responses over a two-week study period. Four researchers actively participated.
ANALYZING THE DATA
Alongside the UI and workflow design, I spearheaded a diary study to ensure the software worked as researchers expected. A small pool of researchers and admistrators were gathered for their feedback. It was a two-week study that subjects logged in-situ (as situations occurred), and included a background questionnaire, and one pre- and post-study meeting. Each participant submitted one log a day for each day that they were doing labwork.
Once data was gathered and follow-up interviews were complete, I generated a findings report. While the data showed that the workflows researchers used were easy-to-follow, there were a lot of wishes for features around study management- [such as editing allocations post-submission, making changes to research teams].
The percieved amount of time spent performing tasks in the database averaged at 27 minutes for both weeks, which included any time that was spent waiting on the database to respond. While the performance of the database had been improved, there were a few glitches/freezes that wre difficult to trace and noted via participant feedback.
Additionally, excluding allocation requests, two third of entries were performed in bulk. Performing tasks in bulk means to handle a task in a duplicated way. Examples of handling tasks in bulk could be a researcher making multiple contact events within an allocation, or an administrator adding multiple families into the database.
Feature Prioritization
After the data analysis, we engaged the development team to ensure that our ideas were doable within the system, and shared our recommendations with the client. We developed a features prioritization matrix to identify what feature enhancements or new features would be critical in the next launch. Small high value, high impact and high value, low impact tasks were submitted as bugs to the development team while larger feature additions and changes were scheduled for future development.
NEXT STEPS
While Phase 2 has yet to begin, the Psychology department that uses the Duckling Database for allocating research subjects to studies has seen an increase in productivity, database performance, and ease-of-use for onboarding and actively using the database for tracking research.
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