City of Calgary
In this case study I will discuss Calgary's plan for dealing with climate change and the measures being implemented to engage its lawmakers and citizens.
Early last year I moved to Calgary Canada to start my journey as a UX Architect at the City of Calgary, it was interesting to see how the local government of a thriving city understands the importance of what an Experience designer brings to government services.
My first project was designing a dashboard for Calgary’s climate and environment. This dashboard is essential to assist the local government in making decisions that are informed and hold them accountable.
One of the problems I found out during User Research was how to hold the council accountable for their decisions which have long-term impacts, impacts which surpass the longevity of the position of the office bearer.
I started with defining the scope of User Research and discovery sessions.
Since most of the features are for our internal stakeholders, with the help of the project sponsor it was easy to identify candidates for user interview sessions.
The purpose of these interviews was to validate assumptions and solidify the problem statement.
User Research
The goal of user interviews:
To gain a deep understanding of users, to develop a product that addresses their pain points and allows users to be directly and indirectly involved in guiding product decisions.
What we want to learn:
- Needs: Understand user needs, what’s not working for them, what problems they are looking to solve with the Environmental Analytics System, and what specific things they need to do that they currently cannot or having a difficult time doing as it pertains to data monitoring, reporting, forecasting and planning.
- Preferences: Identify user preferences, such as the features they value most, tools and methods they prefer, and what’s already working well for them.
- Motivation: Understand what motivates users to use a product, such as the benefits they expect to receive.
- Reasons for resistance or support: Identify the factors that may prevent or encourage users from adopting the product, such as the learning curve, or perceived risks of a new solution.
- Tools and resources used: Understand the tools and resources users currently use to address their needs how the Environmental Analytics System can fit into their current workflows, and what can be replaced.
- Feedback and suggestions: Gather feedback and suggestions on what users would like to see, what is missing, and what could be done better when it comes to climate and environmental monitoring, reporting and forecasting, and the management of this project.
I carried out extensive sessions of Affinity mapping as there were about 20 people interviewed.
As you’d be aware, to validate assumptions 5–6 interviews help achieve 85 percent accuracy for what we are looking for, however in a government organisation, saying that your findings are based on talking to 6 people does not resonate with the business stakeholders, that’s where a design agency is different than a UX practice within a government organisation. In a design agency a true lean methodology is followed, however in a government organisation, numbers matter above everything else.
The findings from the Affinity Mapping were used to create recommendations :
Insights from Affinity Mapping
Success Measures for Corporate Dashboard (High Priority and High Impact)
- Need tracking of indicators, which is not happening currently.
- Automation and ease of access can help in making better real-time strategic recommendations.
- Need access to all relevant metrics: Performance measures, community indicators, etc.
- Centralize information, so it is transparent and visible to everyone.
- Need Raw metrics and the ability to see them all in one place.
- Need practical details detail when it goes in climate performance report for council.
- Projects are touted as having environmental benefits, but once they are implemented, nobody reports on their performance and their impact.
- Collect 3rd party data:
- Calculate carbon factor/sector.
- Create Heat maps.
- Make decisions about where to reduce carbon.
The above insights were used to design the current prototypes, some screenshots have been attached at the beginning of this case study.
Persona:
A persona was created based on the User Story and the User Research, this persona guided us to sculpt the features which wouldn’t just be usable but also useful.
Information Architecture: The next step was to create an information architecture to structure, organise and label the content and navigation system, this was also guided by user research in the sense of how our users think and what direction they’d like to proceed with.
Usability testing: Since this is an ongoing project, I am in the process of selecting candidates for the usability testing, I’ll share the example of a survey which will be used to select the candidates for this and update the findings once that activity is complete.
Please feel free to reach out to me should you need further details or want to chat about shared interests over coffee.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranbijay-krishan-ux/