Detection Map
Design Envisioning | Sketching & Mock-Ups | Wireframes | User Interviews | Usability Testing
My Role
Lead Human Experience Designer @ Microsoft
working with Technical Program Manager, Engineering Team, External Design Team and healthcare customer
Goal
Provide a visual and engaging website for end consumers to learn about the status and spread of COVID-19 and Influenza activity in a specific geographic region using customers medical records
Key Accomplishments
Design Envisioning
-
Educated the customer on the importance of user-centered development by breaking down their business requirements into a hierarchy of user goals for tasking out user stories
Sketching/Wireframes
-
Drove clarity around customer medical record data by creating sketches to understand what the customer was wanting to build and was capable of building from their datasets due to HIPPA compliance
-
Created wireframes to drive clarity and as a guide for development for the engineers
Usability Testing
-
Performed 5 rounds of user interviews to understand what goals users have when using a COVID map website. Using data, I was able to shift the customer's mindset to focus on the most important needs of the user, instead of their previously preconceived requirements
-
Conducted 5 rounds of usability testing to fine-tune our existing solution. Observed how the user interpreted the information on the website, as well as how they navigated the website given specific tasks. Collected common breakpoints from the users and turned them into bug fixes and a backlog for future development
Accessibility Investigation
-
Educated the customer on the importance of accessibility by showing what the website looked like to different users with different color visions. Using visualizations, I was able to shift the customer's mindset to pick a color scheme that was the most accessible for users to understand the difference between high and low COVID risk
Knowledge Transfer
-
Educated the customer's engineering team of 50 people on the fundamentals of user-centered development through a lunch-and-learn presentation on user interviews
Remarks
"Melanie did an amazing job on sharing the user interviews with Providence. The customer gave her great compliments, "Spectacular work, Mel! Thanks!" and "Thanks Mel! This is such valuable information!" The context she provided gave direction to the dev crew as well as to the customer on how to address those pain points"
-Janine Zhu | Principal Program Manager @ Microsoft
"Melanie did an outstanding job as an IC Designer on Providence. The quality of her work in both process and outputs were extremely high quality and she could very easily be a Designer 2 on any product team at Microsoft. The whole HX team was consistently impressed with her preparation, pre-work, and composition in all of the work she did with Providence. Additionally she did a pretty commendable job with the customer, helping them walk with her through the design and research process and to understand the impacts of design and interaction decisions in the engagement."
-Tyler Gibson | Principal Design Manager @ Microsoft
"So well organized and valuable for our team. I really appreciate it!!!!"
"Thanks Mel - as always, I appreciate your expertise!"
- Customer | @ Providence