Digital Impact Alliance
The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) advances digital inclusion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), so that all women, men and children can benefit from life-enhancing, mobile-based digital services.
📋 Summary
Overview
THE PROBLEM
DIAL was seeking new ideas and insights on their new “Playbooks” feature. The Playbooks are designed to provide ‘how to’ guidance to users on leveraging digital technologies to solve problems. These will serve as a generic toolkit or wizard for creating and distributing step-by-step instructions for a particular area(s) of work. For example, DIAL may want to provide guidance to a country on how to work with Mobile Network Operators(e.g.,airtels, Vodacom) in order to set up a contact tracing system for tracking population movements to help with COVID response. The playbooks will walk the users through a set of activities which will have text, images, links to media, and relevant links to supporting online resources. This feature can technically run on the same platform as DIAL’s general catalogue, but it was suggested it may be a good idea to leverage a separate style guide in order to set it apart from the rest of the site.
MY ROLE
End to end UX research and design
TOOLS AND METHODS
Tools: Competitive Audit, Journey Mapping, Kano Analysis, Rapid Prototyping
Methods: Stakeholder Interviews, Comparative Analysis, Surveys, User Interviews, Card Sorting, Tree Testing
Users
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Content Creators
DIAL staff or partners who are creating playbooks for others to use
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Content Consumers
DIAL partners (e.g, government ministers, project managers) looking for a guide on how to do their work
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Other NGO leaders, donors, or technical implementers...
who may be looking for information on how solutions have been implemented. (DIAL views the catalogs and playbooks as public goods to be used by any actor in the development ecosystem.)
🔍 Identify
Understanding what’s out there…
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Competitive Audit
To gain a better understanding of the playbook feature DIAL is developing, I performed a competitive audit. Observing working playbooks, playbook prototypes, and explanation of how a playbook works among 4 comparators.
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Client Kickoff Meeting
Next, I met with DIAL’s lead developer to get a better understanding of their overall goals and a better sense of the playbook and catalogue in their current state.
📝 Define
Brainstorming
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Journey Map
Next, in order to have a better visual representation of the user’s current experience, I created a user journey map.
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Low fidelity wireframes and prototyping
I began brainstorming ideas for new features by way of rapidly prototyping low-fidelity wireframes.
🔍 Identify
Assessing Development Budget and User Needs
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Development Consultation
I met with the lead developer again, and he provided the development budget for each proposed feature sketched by both myself and other UX designers. Based on time constraints, I narrowed down which categories seemed the most important and of those, which we needed to learn more about from DIAL users. Among the most important categories were Content Editor/Template, Navigating within the Playbook, and Help/Assistance.
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Kano Analysis
To evaluate the survey answers, I used the Kano method to determine the level of necessity, attractiveness, performance, and indifference users felt about the features. Learn more about the Kano Method here.
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User Survey
To find out which features were most needed for the Playbook, I constructed a series of questions, framing them in multiple choice form. Users rated each feature according to its desirability and necessity
🖌️Design
Feature Proposal
Once the analysis was complete, I decided on 6 features I felt would be valuable additions to the playbook. First, I added a playbook finder feature, which provides and intuitive and pain-free on the user’s journey to find the playbook most suited to their needs. Throughout the playbook, buttons will also have hover states to establish a clear path for the user. I also updated the header and side navigation in the playbook. In the header navigation, users will be able to quickly download files, quickly share pages/links, and bookmark their spot in a particular playbook. The side navigation will expand and collapse from the hamburger menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen, providing the user with less distraction while going through the necessary steps while still providing easy and convenient navigability. From the side navigation menu, users will also be able to print a customizable PDF of the Playbook, printing the book in its entirety or specific sections if preferred. I’ve also added How To videos that provide a visual along with step by step instructions. If the user will not have access to internet, they have the option to download a transcription of the videos to PDFs. Finally, I’ve added a feature for content creators in which they will be able to preview their edits in real time without having to save and go back into editing mode over and over. This will save much of the content creator’s valuable time!
