Eved
Consultant 2018
Eved’s platform facilitates event and meeting planning by processing purchase orders and invoices for their Fortune 100 clients. With all of this information in one place, it allows their users to see purchasing trends, forecast spend, and negotiate better rates for things like hotels, transportation, and catering. I was hired as a consultant to review their application and make UI/UX improvements.
Eved’s public marketing website.Challenges
The Eved platform is several years old and suffers from a patchwork UI constructed from several design systems and lacks cohesion and consistency throughout the application in delivery. There is a combination of technical and interface issues that creates a cumbersome user experience which lacks clear hierarchy, and includes replicated data, inconsistent navigation, and long load times. End users’ work in the system is task based for daily work, but many users are reliant on email and excel exports from the system for managing workflows and insights.
Solutions
I worked with the Eved team to improve the “Visibility of System Status”. The current platform’s UX is failing to keep users informed about what is going on through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. The goal of the project was to surface system information into dashboards to provide the end user with easy to consume data and directly actionable items. Beyond the dashboards, I worked to formalize a consistent navigation, design, and code system, and systematically apply that throughout the site to improve the information architecture.
My process was to break the project down into the following steps, where each had a clear deliverable for the client.
Evaluate Heuristic evaluation of the current platform.
Research Interview and work with core Eved stakeholders and customers to determine most used, and most desired functionality. Review existing product roadmap, and key company KPIs to determine a path to success.
Wireframe & Test Create low fidelity mockups of revised dashboards, and conduct user testing to verify their efficiency.
Prototype Create high fidelity mockups of the new dashboards using insights gained from the previous rounds of work.
Results
Heuristic Evaluation
The results of the Heuristic Evaluation was a 37 page document that outlined the current status of their dashboards. I used the following guidelines to perform the evaluation.
User Interface (UI) Design How do the different elements that make up the sites design work together on the page? Is there consistency? Is the design using modern best practices? Reviewed items: color, hierarchy, typography, layout, links, design systems, UI libraries.
User Experience (UX) Design How do end users interact with the system? Are there usability issues? Is the interface in compliance with modern methodologies and usability principles? What is working well / what needs improvement? Are the dashboards meeting the goal of delivering actionable items to the user?
Technical Implementation How is the page constructed? What coding methodologies, systems, and platforms make up what is delivered to the user? What can be improved to increase page load speeds and end user experience
Bugs Document any bugs that I come across while evaluating the platform.
Page 7 from the Heuristic EvaluationResearch
During the research process I Interviewed and worked with core Eved staff members and stakeholders to determine most used and most desired functionality in the platform. We reviewed the product roadmap and key company KPIs to determine the designs to focus on to create a path to success.
Interviews I interviewed 10 cross-disciplinary Eved team members and customers to gain insights into usage patterns, practices, needs, and wants within the platform.
Review Materials I reviewed the companies marketing, product, and UX materials including pitch decks, product decks, user personas, roadmap details, desired KPIs, and more.
Wireframe and Test
In the next phase of the project, I created low fidelity mockups of revised dashboards and system landing pages. I then conducted user testing to verify the data being displayed, user actions, and efficiency. I took 10 users through wire testing and used a google form to capture results and metrics for the team.
Example wireframe layoutFinal Deliverables
I presented my process and final designs to the product and executive teams at Eved. For the purposes of this project, I was asked to stay within their existing design system. The final deliverable was a click through InVision prototype that captured the new end-to-end user experience. I also provided a detailed annotated PDF of the different screens, their hover states, and interactions. These screens were made up of the following system landing pages and components.
User onboarding process for new dashboard
Event planning dashboard
Financial analysis dashboard
Event groups concept dashboard
Program and events dashboard
Purchase order and invoice dashboard
14 unique dashboard charts and widgets
