Ubiquity Press

Older Version

When starting this project, I was introduced to the version that the users were already using, which was called JURA. The features that JURA had were all clustered and very difficult to understand. I had to re-create JURA into a new centralized administration interface called Central Station.

User Research

To gain insights into user pain points and their specific needs, I conducted interviews. Subsequently, I observed that the projects being tackled by other product designers would also be integrated into Central Station. As a result, we collaborated on Central Station together.

Interview

I had the opportunity to interview six users, including two Ubiquity Press Administrators, two press managers, and two journal managers spanning from the United States to the United Kingdom. The key insights gathered are:

• Users find Ubiquity Press products dispersed and confused with no guidance, leading users to have fear of using features in the product. Therefore the features in JURA were barely touched except the ones that they know how to use it.

• In UP products, non-technical users often struggle with back-end settings that require coding, resulting in frequent requests for developer assistance for even simple changes.

• Users encounter challenges with understanding user permissions, leading to confusion about what they can access and what restrictions apply.

Secondary Research

When searching for administration interfaces, the main takeaways are:

• They had dashboard that shows the summary of tasks, ongoing process, data, and more features that can be customized.

• Simple menu bar that consist of essential categories

• Showing user name and its role that helps users to feel more personalized once they login

• Help page that can support users when they have question

Survey

We conducted a survey to figure out what kind of functionality they mostly use in JURA, and what kind of functionality should and should not be added into Central Station. We then organized the most used and least used buttons into spreadsheets to see which ones should be deleted and which should be kept.

Affinity Mapping

With surveys, interviews, and secondary research we have done affinity mapping so that we can see take out key insights of what is needed for Central Station.

Grouping Features

Based on the survey, we deleted “not used” buttons. And Based on the top 7 “most used” buttons, which was various kinds of ‘setting’, we grouped all the other features under 7 “most used” setting buttons, so that all the buttons/features are organized into 7 setting categories.

Action Grouping

We wanted to see not only the category of settings but also the actions in order to scale down the scope. Here, we gathered with our product manager to discuss which buttons in the settings are categorized as action buttons and decided to keep some buttons and remove others based on our project goal, company’s goal, and user’s needs. Here, we also were able to determine what will be in the main menu navigation so that the users can have a simple flow.

User Persona/Matrix

After the interviews and surveys, we defined user personas. In order to know exactly which features are accessible to which user persona, we created a chart.

Problems/Goals/Solutions

Here, I matched each problem, goal, and solution into one category in order to see overall goal of the project.

Low-Fidelity Prototype

With key insights and user flow, we created low-fidelity prototypes. During this process, we were still talking to our Ubiquity Press Admins to make sure all of the user flow was correct and that our low-fidelity prototypes made sense in connection with the user flow.

Some of the key features that we created in this phase were:

• For easier navigation, we made an Overview page, which is the main page where users will land. As soon as the user comes in, they see the information they would like to see and be alerted. Since users wanted a simple design where they can access the things they need right away without having to ask developers, we put all the priorities and most used features on the dashboard based on the survey.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

At this point, we were constantly user testing and making changes to the design of pages and adding new pages. We have gotten lots of good feedback as we tested certain user flows that each user persona took. We also reminded ourselves of our goal/problem/solution. We decided to add an instruction page for the users as they were first confused about how Central Station itself worked. Since our main navigation pages were done, we worked on the sub-navigation pages, where we started to add features and buttons on those pages. We had to define each button’s navigation to the designated page.

High Fidelity Prototype

After discussing with our team, and constantly executing our mini usability sessions, we have made our final high-fidelity prototypes. We have changed our UI design to modernized our website. Additionally, we have added more pages, and functionality based on the needs of the users.