GravityDrive - PUXD

In this project, my Purdue UX Design team worked with GravityDrive, a UX Design consultancy, helping companies create platforms for a variety of different fields. In this project, our topic was to create a platform for Crew Leads in the landcare industry, consolidating the fragmented tools currently used into one centralized platform.

To view in more detail the full process, view our final presentation. For this portfolio, I will be focusing on my project management skills and what I learned from this experience, as well as the specific activities that I championed during the project.

My role

This semester, I had the opportunity to act as the main sponsor communicator (point of contact) for this project. I was in charge of sending all emails from our team to our sponsor, keeping him updated on the project. I also had the opportunity to mentor 3 freshmen students in their first UX design studio. I learned a lot about leadership, delegating tasks, team building, and communication this semester, reflected by some of my mentee's feedback:

Design Process

Our final deliverable for our sponsor and his team included:

High Fidelity Prototype

Design Recommendations

Design Documentation

Goal: Better understand prior semester research to synthesize insights, fill research gaps via targeted primary research on crew leads, and validate assumptions.

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

Tracks 2 & 3

For this milestone, the team split up into 2 tracks: Track 1 and 2, and then merged again at the end for Track 3. My focus on this project was on Tracks 2 and 3, where we conducted the activities listed above.

Review Past Research

Our project was a continuation of a previous semester project, where they focused on research of the landcare industry and provided design recommendations for a platform. We used this as our basis to guide our design thinking.

Findings

The landcare industry is in need of a platform combining roles of sales, managers, and employees.
This semester focused on sales, managers, and crew, so a lot of their recommendations are not relevant for our focus of Crew Leads.
Crew Leads could most benefit from the following features:

Crew/Team Auto-Scheduling

Allows Crew Leads to schedule crew and build teams.

Efficient Resource & Equipment Tracking

Prevents missing items, tracks resources, and increases efficiency.

Project Progress Averages

Tracks delays, alerts, project progress, and overall timelines for the project.

Competitive Analysis

After creating an image board to inspire design thinking, we found several landcare platforms with similarities to the one we are creating. We then did an analysis on the 4 companies to gain design inspiration and understand industry standards. The companies that we highlighted advantages, disadvantages, and features were:

Findings

Arborgold and Granum had the most features similar to the platform we are ideating.
TopGreen had too much contrasting green colors, so stay away from making the platform too overwhelming for users.
Simplicity is key for the platform to remain easy to use, too much information makes the user overwhelmed and confused.

Sketching

After creating our site map, we moved onto sketching, taking all of our ideas into consideration and creating quick sketches for the platform.

Findings

Tasks section clearly indicating the tasks remaining on the project for the day.

Projects tab that is collapsible with all types of Projects.
Sections on project with a top nav bar to cycle through all features of the platform.
Progress tracking bar showing current project status and timeline.

Taking elements from these sketches and the sketches of the rest of the team, we were then able to create a singular solution to test with users.

Goal: Begin to translate synthesized research insights into validated design concepts through low- and mid- fidelity wireframes, concept testing, and co-design activities, refining workflows, information architecture, and role-based experiences based on user feedback.

Interviews

After consolidating our sketches into a singular workflow and design, we moved on to interviews where we conducted phone interviews and one worksite visit with Crew Leads to understand their current process and see how our solution might fit into their current workflow.

Outcomes

Our team was better able to understand the capabilities of small scale landcare companies day-to-day.
We discovered important information regarding paper documents that they use daily.
Discovered that these companies tend to do work twice: once in the field and then again in the office on a computer.

There are many ways in which our platform can improve on the experiences of these Crew Leads and our interviews gave us good insights to implement going into our Low Fi wireframes.

Concept Testing

After creating our Low Fi wireframes and conducting a priority matrix to further clarify the most important features to focus on, we moved onto concept testing.

Goal: Finalize and validate our design solutions through usability testing and iterative refinement, resulting in a high-fidelity, interactive prototype, and complete design documentation that is ready to be handed off for future development.

Final Prototype

After iterating on our prototype and conducting usability testing, we then moved on to finalizing the prototype to propose the final solution. I worked extensively on this prototype, acting as the main UI designer and figma expert. I helped my team learn how to use auto-layout to make the prototype functional, consistent, and developer ready. I also added components, overlays, and other interactions to make the prototype as close to what it would look like when used by Crew Leads in a project. While I cannot share the entire prototype due to my NDA on this project, this process gave me a lot of experience in not just figma, but also project management and teaching others how to use this tool effectively as well. I learned a lot about designing a system for landcare professionals and iterating based on feedback.

Design Iteration process

While I cannot show the entire prototype, I can show the progression from Low Fi to High Fi for one screen, showcasing how our testing influenced our design choices to create the full final prototype. Below is an example of the dashboard page during the Low Fi, Mid Fi, and High Fi stages to get an idea of what the prototype consists of.

Low Fidelity

Mid Fidelity

High Fidelity