The Process
The design process for this project followed the Government of Ontario’s iterative service design lifecycle as seen below.
Discovery
Conducting user research
to understand people’s needs
Alpha
Developing and testing
our hypotheses with users
Beta
Developing a minimum
viable service and making it available to the public
Live
Continuing to improve based
on user feedback
Service Design Lifecycle taken from ontario.ca’s “Service design playbook”.
Discovery
Prior to the start of my work term, the project team interviewed forestry data users to uncover what the existing process for requesting and gaining access to forestry data looked like for both users and data providers. A series of insights soon became clear:
Data took long to access
The process to request forestry data relied on uploading data to several hard drives and shipping them out to the user. This process could often be time-consuming.
Data is often evolving
Forestry data is often evolving and updated according to the seasons. This means its up to users to stay up-to-date with new data as it becomes available .
Data is not all in one place
If users wanted to access data digitally, they would have to check a variety of different websites to see if the data they needed was available online, or if it required a hard drive request.
Alpha
I began to explore and test hypotheses with my team in the Alpha phase of the design life cycle through interface design and user research. Our project team worked closely with staff from the Forest Resources Inventory program, who oversaw the development and delivery of Forestry data, as well as data users, such as SFLs.
Developing a Hypothesis
Since users primarily relied on hard drives to access forestry data – or would otherwise attempt to search various Ministry websites – our team decided to create one webpage for users to find data they needed. This webpage was to be included on the Ministry’s “GeoHub” website as an information repository for the Forest Resources Inventory (FRI) program. This webpage was conceptualized in a mockup which included information according to user needs uncovered in the Discovery phase.
Preliminary mockup of Inventories section on GeoHub.
User feedback organized on Miro.
Collecting User Feedback
We grouped feedback on what users liked about the information included in the mockup, what information was missing, and what information could be presented differently for improved readability. As result, more information about forestry data access was introduced to the mockup.
Ultimately, these results helped refine the webpage’s design for the next phase of user research.
Beta
After iterating the mockup based off user research insights, I was tasked with developing the webpage on the GeoHub website. Ensuring consistent communication with the website manager, I created a functional page with a feedback form to continuously receive user feedback.
Usability Testing
Participants were asked to complete a series of tasks on the updated mockup to test if content could easily be located where users expected it to be.
This usability test helped uncover areas where more information could be added to clarify forestry data services. For example, we discovered that users required instructions on how to interact with an embedded map on the mockup, and so bolded text was added above the map for improved usability.
The embedded “Lidar data” map on GeoHub with bolded text instructions above.
User research synthesis
Other feedback from the usability interviews was also grouped and synthesized to uncover a variety of insights, such as:
- Users required forestry terminology to be clearly explained on the page since not every user was deeply familiar with each term
- Certain areas on the page could not be navigated to using a keyboard
- Information on how to contact staff for assistance needed to be included on the page
User feedback organized on Miro.
Live
Insights from Beta were integrated into the final version of the page, which can now be found at
https://geohub.lio.gov.on.ca/pages/forest-resources-inventory. A feedback form and contact information remains on the page to ensure user feedback can be continuously collected and considered.
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The search page of the new GeologyOntario displaying results for “Gold”.
Reflection
This project was an incredible opportunity to speak with users on a product they were eagerly looking forward to, while ensuring that the product would meet all their needs. As the sole designer on the team, it was exciting to explore UX design in collaboration with other roles on the team. However looking back, there are more things I would have liked to explore.
Engage with stakeholders often
I would be curious to gain Forestry staff’s perspective on information they often get questions about, and how that information could be incorporated on the page. While this information was briefly touched on during discovery, it would be useful to consistently get stakeholder feedback during the design process.
Explore opportunities beyond design system
Rather than looking at WCAG and accessibility requirements during the prototyping stage, I would like to explore opportunGeoHub uses a design system with limited components. Although it was necessary to adhere to the design system for this project, it would be interesting to explore how the solution could be further developed outside of the provided components for future iterations.ities to introduce accessibility from the start of the project to ensure it is integrated at every stage of the design lifecycle.
