Problem
Planning large events in a government space often requires coordination of several different teams. The Large Conference Facilities group oversees the coordination of these services and ensures it is handled seamlessly.
Data collected from post-event surveys found that users were having difficulties with onboarding for events . I was tasked with creating a research plan for evaluating the current issues and providing recommendations on how to improve the process.
Discovery and Insights
Stakeholders were convened to outline the personas of those participating in the LCS process. A service blueprint was created to give stakeholders a visual representation of the process and to help better identify areas of concern. The same blueprint was then utilized for user-interviews to identify any gaps in the process and to gather further knowledge into painpoints. Findings from this research revealed that the user journey as currently defined was not optimized for efficiency with many areas having needless redundancy and breakpoints.
A deeper dive into findings revealed that many of these painpoints in the user flow were stop-gaps to prevent user form entry errors from occurring when completing booking reservations. I began working with the team to identify practical solutions to the form's usability issues with the goal being to reduce user-error issues and provide a more user-friendly booking and reservation form. A series of usability test were completed to help address ideal readability and navigation for the form.
Card sort
Card Sort
Navigation (Click) Test
Impact
Through research I was able to identify a list of features for form enhancements. These features were presented to stakeholders and were prioritized during collaborative session that I hosted involving stakeholders, developers, and myself. The research served as the foundation of the redesign of the form.
The Covid-19 pandemic began right as work redesigning the booking and reservation form was starting off As priorities within the agency quickly shifted and the future of in-person events became uncertain, I worked with the team to identify the future of the team. This led to the a new discovery session where we explored how LCS would operate in a mostly virtual setting.
Research conducted during the initial discovery stage was leveraged to help guide the teams plan for the future of Large Conferences. Ensuring continued user satisfaction and, reducing needs for administrative redundancy was a priority for the group as things rapidly changed in the world surrounding the pandemic.
I worked with the team to conduct a redesign of the LCS intranet page that users used to access information prior to planning an event which included a content audit, a visual redesign, and the addition of several new pages. I also assisted the team with the development of new OKR's to measure success in the new virtual environment.
Sample of low-fidelity form mock-ups
Mind Mapping Technique