Work
Case Studies
Team members:
Judi Rhee Alloway (PHL): Discover Lead & Product Owner
Scott Etkin (NYC): Define Lead & Scrum Master
Zavier Lowe (NYC): Design Lead & Development to Hand-Off
Andre Lima (BOS): Project Manager, DO-IT Team, City of Boston
Crystal Torman (BOS): Senior Advisor, Economic Development Cabinet
Keywords:
City, Government, Research, Interviews, Press Releases, Screener, Affinity Map, Personas, Problem Statement, Solution Statement, Content Site Analysis, SEO, Sketch, Wireframes, Usability Testing, Scripts, Coaching, Project Management, Technical & Time Constraints
3-Week Holiday Sprint with Research, Design & Technical Constraints
Working with any city government has its fair share of givens along with its fair share of limitations especially during the holiday season. Within a 3 week sprint in our initial intake, we discussed our client’s Problem Statement of redesigning the webpage and signed off on our Statement of Work with 2 teams of internal stakeholders, one technical, DO-IT, and the other content, Economic Development, Business Strategy Team.
The original webpage was text heavy and inline navigation links with 1 Global Affairs Business in Boston video ending with a standard department CTA button to email only 1 person. Our client wished for a more dynamic and visual webpage based on their Why Boston pitch deck and controversial Amazon HQ2 bid with a general team CTA email. Their organic traffic was mainly from their parent site of Economic Development, so they were concerned if they were missing out on additional traffic using another set of keywords based on business development. Our team daily sprints were at 4pm EST through Slack and Zoom with a weekly sprint to discuss deliverables on 3 weekday afternoons with City of Boston government representatives.
During Discover for 5 days, I lead research strategy, created a Screener survey, finalized interview scripts with consent forms, and communicated with our client over the course of the next 4 days. Given a website library of materials and additional visual inspiration the “Why Boston?” pitch deck and Amazon HQ2 bid from Business Strategy Unit and Brand, Style, and Writing Guide with a complete design system without access to Sketch files from the DO-IT Team. To understand more about the Economic Development ecosphere, Scott completed our Competitive and Comparative Analysis while Zavier developed our Feature Inventory and I did a Content Site Analysis with an eye towards SEO.
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But if residents don’t know who is speaking to them, then why should they listen?
“I appreciate that they had this word document that probably some intern made like 5 years ago with the basic steps, but then there are all these things that just weren’t there that I had no idea that I needed to do.” Mei Li
During Define for 3 days in Week 2, Scott took the lead for SWOT, 2 user flows, a site map for both Economic Development and Business Strategy webpage, and picking facts and statistics from Why Boston and Amazon HQ2. Per Crystal’s request, I continued to research competitive keywords: business strategy vs. business development and related long tail keywords to compile my findings and recommendations in a 31 page Detailed Findings Report. Zavier re-created the client’s design system, while we examined given resources and technical Sketch components. Despite the Citizen Interviews and 5 personas, we decided to dive deeper into our research. Zavier and I generated 3 more specific personas (2 Business and 1 Lifestyle) from Press Release quotes, Screener questionnaire, Interviews, and emails with businesses over the Thanksgiving holidays to pin down the 8 most important factors of why people and businesses move. Creating a mini-deck for Client Review, we added all personas, problem statements, user flows and site maps for our next weekly client sprint and review. Our clients only wanted minor changes in personas and sitemaps with Scott as our main editor. Crystal even remarked how real our personas are that “Everyone knows a guy that looks like Matt Smith!”
Great Ideas, BUT We Can’t Develop Them
During Design for 7 days in Week 3, Zavier led our weekend Design Studio in Sketch compiling the best of each wireframe to present to our client. With a dynamic 10 image carousel sprinkled with keywords and stats and a form with checkboxes that leads to a general email inbox, we thought that we nailed it on the first try. At our weekly stand up meeting with Andre and Crystal on Wednesday, we heard our first major hiccup. Andre delivered the technical blow, we can’t hardcode carousels. I pitched Crystal an emotional step-by-step journey map of moving your business to Boston, which was swiftly rejected due to its linear nature.
We were initially at a loss – until I Sherlocked the magic bullet in their Sketch components as a workaround: 4 How-To tabs structure combined with a hero picture.
Designing an Informative & Dynamic Website
Back to the Design Studio, Zavier quickly created wireframes in Sketch, while Scott fine tuned user flows and 2 sitemaps and I updated personas based on client feedback. After our next meeting, we revealed our hi-fidelity InVision. Crystal was impressed by our visual representation of statistics and facts and Andre saw the feasibility of lift and development at our Tuesday weekly standup. While Zavier finished prototyping, I worked on team usability testing scripts, consent forms, and quantitative templates and Scott drafted our Presentation. Our clients preferred to only test with internal stakeholders on Wednesday with our presentation due on Friday. After usability testing, Zavier tweaked our prototype as I eagle eyed pixels, content, and alignment and Scott polished our deck on Thursday. We practiced 4 times before our Friday afternoon 25 minute presentation, which we nailed. Our clients were overjoyed with their new “modern and approachable” webpage!
As we wrapped up, our clients had a few last minute requests and tweaks despite our scheduled hand-off. Per their request, Zavier updated Sketch files, as I reviewed pixels and alignment with Scott editing content one last time as I prepared all deliverables. Additionally we presented for the DO-IT Team on Thursday and completed hand off. Our clients were so satisfied with their design prototype that Andre even offered to post a blog about our journey!
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