Partner portal

Creating a user centred web portal

Skills

Ideation User research

Background

The project was to create a new web portal that Nintex Partners used to get information on events and training. (Details used with permission)

Web site before redesign

I was part of a design team of two (later three) UX designers  that managed the design of a new Partner Portal.

I led the research and was co-designer of the other activities including page designs and content.

Challenge

There were several challenges to this project, apart from the ever-present tight timelines and resourcing.

  • The site owners had already created a site concept.
  • The developers started building the site the day we UX designers were engaged.
  • I was new to the company and had little understanding of the partner user group.

Actions

We worked quickly and were able to complete user research and initial concepts for the entire site within three weeks.

Further design work was carried out colocated with the development team to complete the project.

UX research activities spanned:

  • Site analytics
  • Card sorting
    Both open and closed sorting was combined with group analysis to shape the information architecture
  • Information architecture testing
    Used manual tree-testing with common tasks to test findability
  • User surveys
    An online survey tool gave information on user cohorts and wants/needs.  Affinity diagraming helped determine common factors.
  • User interviews and testing
    Current users were interviewed to gain insights.

UX design activities included

  • Sketching
    Sketching designs and concepts enabled us to brain-storm many ideas and get feedback faster. Also meant less time needed to get a “big picture” understanding of how the site would work.

  • Wireframes
  • Axure clickable prototypes
  • High fidelity designs
    The finished designs were only created after the prototypes, concepts and research had been reviewed by the team.  ((Finished designs were created by the sensational Jamie Truran))

Results

  • We were able to persuade the stakeholders to follow our UX process and not use their original design
  • The finished portal was very well received with a high tested satisfaction rating (assessed with SUS).
  • The project stakeholders were very happy with the outcome and this lead to further collaborations at Nintex having similar colocated design, research and development members.
  • The project was completed on time and budget.