Data Driven
Client: Monicat Data
Methods: StakeHolder Interviews, Interactive Prototyping, Personas, Journey Mapping and User Testing
Tools: , Sketch, Adobe Illustrator, Axure RP and InVision App
Monicat Data is a company that offers data and technology consulting to creative businesses. The founding members of Monicat Data are each data analysts, however, they are also artists. Through their business, the Monicat Data team has noticed that artists in creative based businesses do not often use data and technology practices currently embraced by corporate America.
The owners of Monicat Data approached our team asking for help bringing the services that they offer in-person to a new digital platform. I worked with a team of five designers on this project. We were asked to design towards a beta release of a new software platform that could act as a hub where creative businesses would be able to collect and view data from many different sources in one place. Another goal of the platform was to show these businesses how to use the data they are currently collecting to guide them when making decisions for their business.
Sketch file of my recreation of the wireframes that Monicat Data supplied our team. These were assembled into an InVision prototype used in our first round of user testing.
The team at Monicat Data had already done a lot of work on this project before my team got involved. We were supplied with wireframes and concept art for the platform. The first thing our team wanted to do on this project was to build and test a prototype based on the wireframes we were given from the team at Monicat Data. My first assignment within our team was to rebuild each of the wireframes we were given digitally. I used the program Sketch to created low-fidelity wireframes for each screen of the application. As I was designing these screens, another member of our team assembled them into a prototype for us to use while conducting user testing.
User testing session photo with our friend and research participant Andy.
Monicat Data was able to put our team in touch with creative entrepreneurs who were willing to help us test our prototype design. I conducted a majority of the user testing sessions where we tested this prototype. In our testing sessions it became clear that the term “creative business” encompasses a wide variety of businesses. Some of these businesses we spoke with were large but some were owned and operated by just a single person. A few of these organizations had a dedicated data specialist on staff. However, some of these organizations never even aspire to have the bandwidth that would allow them much time to devote to data collection and analysis.
We found in our research that the Monicat software was going to need to be something for everyone. The software needed to be robust enough that expert data users found this tool valuable. This software also had to be approachable enough for a data novice to not be confused by it. Our team spoke at length about the importance of on-boarding for this software platform. We needed to make sure that new users had access to some form of education when first learning this software or when using new features for the first time. Our goal was to find a way to educate and on-board new users without talking down to a novice user, and to do that while using language that would not lead an expert user to believe this platform was below their skill level.
Education and on-boarding brainstorming and research ideation.
My specific role within our group was to research and test several different education methods for on-boarding new users to the platform. I did research into the on-boarding process used by several different SaaS platforms such as Tableau or the InVision app. Then, I drew up low-fidelity wireframes showing several different on-boarding techniques similar to techniques I found during my research. I digitized these wireframes for use in a second round of user testing. During this second round of tests, users provided feedback on which methods they liked or which they thought would help them learn how to best use this software platform.
I created wireframes of various Education methods used by other SaaS platforms. These were presented to potential users of the software during the second round of our user testing sessions.
The results from my second round of user testing helped to advise our team on which methods of education and on-boarding resonated most with the users I spoke with. These methods were handed over to our design team to be added to a high-fidelity version of our prototype. That prototype was presented during our hand off of deliverables to the Monicat Data staff.
Our team prepared a presentation of each of our findings to present to the Monicat Data stakeholders.
The Monicat Data software platform is scheduled to move into the development phase soon. Over the course of this project, it became clear to me how valuable the software we were helping to develop could be for creative entrepreneurs. Corporate America long ago embraced the use of data to help drive their businesses forward. It is rewarding to think my work was helping to make a similar tool to help people that don’t have the same time and resources as their corporate competitors.
I was responsible for collecting and organizing our research data for handoff to the Monicat Data staff. During the project our team defined 6 unifying goals that were used to move our designs forward.
I created a Journey Map highlighting Arthur’s potential interactions with Monicat Data.
During our research, I built the persona of Arthur Jordan. Arthur’s persona was built based on our teams research findings. His persona was used to guide us in making design decisions.