UX Research and Design
I began my design career as a UX Consultant, working between two agencies Sitback Solutions and AKQA. My work focused on UX Research through to Wireframes, for a range of well known clients across a number of industries, from global banking to government agencies.
Citibank Wealth
Agency Sitback Solutions view
Project Length 5 months
Industry Banking
Role UX Consultant in a two person team
Design Brief Citibank had a general brief to improve the overall UX of their website. Deciding to focus on each area of business separately, they engaged us to focus on the Wealth section, by conducting a UX Immersion, split into two phases.
Phase 1: UX Research
This phase consisted of a series of research methods to help develop a "Reverse Brief" for the client, to determine the best approach for the following Design Phase. The UX research included:
• Documentation Review
• Stakeholder Interviews - a series of key stakeholders were interviewed to understand the current and desired Citi Wealth audience, their needs and aims, how Citi's Relationship Managers build and maintain relationships with Wealth clients, and the customer journey.
• Desktop Research - to further explore and validate insights surfaced from the stakeholder interviews, including industry reports and competitor analyses.
• Analysis and Reporting - these insights were then synthesised to develop recommendations captured in a report.
Phase 2: Design
The previous phase illustrated that multiple rounds of User Validation Testing would lead to the most engaging and intuitive wireframes. The most efficient way to do this would be to use an Agile approach, allowing the design and development stages to overlap. This entailed five Sprints:
• Information Architecture - co-design workshops with stakeholders explored and defined research findings, resulting in a needs-based IA that considered brand prominence, a pre-existing Digital Design Language, and mega-navigation.
• User Interface Design (Wireframes) - key pages and functionality supported by the Wealth section, in three form factors (desktop, tablet, mobile).
• User Validation: 6 x 1on1 interviews and prototype usability testing with representative end users, which focused on the Awareness to Acquisition/Onboarding sections of the customer journey. Results were then presented to the client in a consolidated report.
• Repeat of Design and Validation sprints.
The client was very happy with the research and design results of this project, and the informative co-design workshops throughout the process allowed them to feel connected with its progress and outcomes.
Aussie Home Loans
Agency AKQA view
Project Length 1 month
Industry Finance
Role Snr UX Designer, leading the User Research phase
Design Brief Aussie had begun to observe rapidly evolving needs and expectations from customers due to a strong shift toward more digital interactions, integrated with an omni channel experience; new market entry disruption; and changes in the Banking and Financial services industry. Consequently, they sought to achieve the goal of being a leader in customer experience, by creating the best digital experience for each user, validated through research.
AKQA was engaged for the research phase of the project, to compile a Landscape Review, thus informing the shift needed in order for Aussie to achieve their goal. The methods used included:
• Stakeholder Workshops
• Interviews with 5 x Users and 2 x Mortgage Brokers (validated by 17 broker surveys)
• Landscape Review - qualitative user and market analysis to inform Proto-Personas of Aussie's users, a competitor review of traditional banks and specialised services, and the recommended shift needed for each Persona type in order to be reached by Aussie.
Australian Public Service Commission
Agency Sitback Solutions view
Project Length 6 months
Industry Government
Role UX Consultant in a two person team
Design Brief The APSC had the grand vision to overhaul its APS Jobs website, which acts as a job listing site for all federal agencies and departments. It had previously required manual entries from each agency, with a disjointed and slow listing process. The new website design would allow for a more cohesive and consistent flow for both job listers and applicants. It would also entail a centralised database to account for Requisitioning (job details and approval workflow), an Applicant Tracking System, Candidate Acquisition (recruitment system), and Reporting (billing and analytics).
Phase 1: Research
The APS Jobs sites was a complex site, encompassing a number of internal and external user types, which required sensitivity to existing workers who might be affected by the automation of a number of tasks. In order to gain informed insight into the needs of each, a range of stakeholder and user research was undertaken:
• Stakeholder interviews - from the APSJobs Operations Team to job publishers (Agency HR Managers and Admin Teams) to explore the APSC’s vision for the APSJobs website, and identify risks, constraints and other project considerations.
• Contextual enquiries, user interviews and guerrilla interviews (conducted around the APSC in Canberra) of users with representative end-users to explore general job search behaviour, and key tasks in relation to the APSJobs website.
• Personas - developed by analysing and synthesising findings from across all above research activities into a set of personas.
• Experience Map - broke down the stages involved across all user types from job listing by agency admin to jobseekers, to APSC admin monitoring. Government employment is a heavily regulated sector with a strict process to be adhered to.
Phase 2: Design
We were given a clean slate to develop new Information Architecture and responsive Wireframes, utilising the many insights gathered in the previous phase.
Two sections needed to be considered: the public facing site and the agency backend. Careful consideration was taken to consider the needs of highly varied agencies and stakeholders, across the entirety of the federal government sector.
30 wireframes across three form factors (desktop, tablet, mobile) were created whilst working closely with our Development team and an external Creative team, to ensure the proposed designs were in line with the brand strategy, and technically optimised for the Drupal CMS platform.
A clickable prototype was then created in Axure to prepare for a more intensive Usability Testing series of 12 participants, representing each end user, to validate design decisions such as navigation, information architecture and core functionality. Key areas of focus included terminology, the agency's task flow of posting a vacancy, the jobseeker's search/listing criteria, and email alerts for the Redeployment Page, to determine whether it matches the user’s needs and mental model of the process.
After a number of months of designing, presenting and revising, the final deliverables were positively received by both users and stakeholders. We then worked alongside a separate creative agency who created visual designs of the wireframes, ready for build.
This was one of my first projects working for an agency and provided many enjoyable learnings and insights into the fast-paced consulting environment.
