PROJECT: SPACE FORCE WEBSITE APPLICATION

MY ROLE: UX DESIGNER, UX RESEARCH

DURATION: ONE WEEK SPRINTS

TEAM: 2 DESIGNERS, 2 PM, 2 DEVS

PLATFORM: WEBSITE APPLICATION

TOOLS: FIGMA, PIVOTAL TRACKER, LUCID PARK, JIRA, GOOGLE SUITE, OTTER, ZOOM, TRELLO, PEN, AND PAPER

CLIENT OVERVIEW

Currently, in police precincts across the US, operational planners are tasked with generating resource allocation plans for the district they support in accordance with the chief’s priorities. Today the master policing plan is generated and briefed in Microsoft Powerpoint. It is usually signed off on and disseminated to various officers within the department for review.

THE CHALLENGE

A police department based in LA county asked our team to modernize this process. We learned that there are many problems associated with having to gather information, plan & deconflict resources using Microsoft PowerPoint and that there may be gaps in leadership’s ability to make effective decisions because of the format they use today. Our team’s goal was to deliver value to the user and the organization

Our Process

 Problem Discovery & Prioritization

 

Their current Process

  • Districts email support requests to planners.

  • Planners manage requests on Share Drives with Leadership.

  • All communication about requests, events, and their status is done over the phone and email.

  • The process isn’t ready to support any higher volume of requests

 

 Concept Validation

 

 How might we provide our users with a quicker, more efficient way to conduct secret (S) and top secret (TS) missions by leveraging new technologies and assuring the stakeholder that we will meet all of their cybersecurity measures?

Framing of Solutions

 

Our Solution

To bring modern technology into an environment as sensitive as this is a huge undertaking. We need to provide value to the user while remaining in compliance with all cyber security restrictions. If you were to strip this product of all its classifications at its core it is a logistics planning tool that will provide windows of time when it would be ok for the police to conduct operations without being seen. We need to provide a more seamless way for this information to be shared out, calculated, and archived. A web application was the perfect fit. Users could take it with them in the field and send information quickly.

Concept Testing

After we generated some concepts from the ideation phase, we ran a series of interviews with our core user groups (police planners & leadership) in order to evaluate whether our proposed solutions were valuable and usable. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all feedback sessions were remotely moderated.

 

 Lo-fi Concepts

 
 

Major Takeaways

 

  • Despite some usability issues, most members in each user group rated the solution as being significantly more valuable than their current solution(s).

  • Both user groups found the timeline view to be highly valuable however indicated that they need a more “presentation” style display for briefings as displaying alongside planning UI was distracting.

Iterations of solutions

 

Design & Develop

Because our solution would be a web application, both the planners & leadership indicated that we may not need to include an export functionality as other consumers would be able to use the tool to view the plan.

 
 

 Astro is a government-owned space design system. This system enables development teams to build rich app experiences and custom applications with established interaction patterns and best practices. Our team combines Astro and Material UI, a react component library developed by Google, to quickly develop mission unique apps

 
 
 

 Hi-Fi Designs: Map View

  • Event summaries are simultaneously viewable next to the map view.

  • Filter by date range, geography, and activity type.

  • Customizable activity icons for quick recognition/differentiation.

  • Dark Mode UI: Suitable for dimly lit offices that planners tend to work in.

 

  Hi-Fi: Presentation Mode

  • Presentation Mode for quickly viewing activities over time.

  • Police units assigned to an activity are displayed when the activity is highlighted.

  • The timeline displays length of activity, overlap with other activities & summary information.

  • Clickthrough events (instead of auto-playing) to allow for discussion during briefings.

 Some Metrics

  • Reduced the time planners spend creating a Master Plan by 80%.

  • The number of clicks to add one single event to the Master Plans was reduced from 311 clicks to 30 clicks.

Next Steps

  • Reduced the time planners spend creating a Master Plan by 90%.

  • The number of clicks to add one single event to the Master Plans was reduced from 311 clicks to 30 clicks.

  • Deliver a mission archive feature for planners to be able to reuse events.

  • Incorporate modal to gather user feedback.

  • Continuously iterate on and validate interaction & UI design decisions.