US Government Agency
Modernizing an outdated enterprise platform.
Geocent
In 2019, Geocent, a company that offers technology solutions to federal, state, and local government sectors, as well as the defense and aerospace industries, was awarded a multi-year contract as the prime recipient with a US Government agency. The contract’s primary objective was to overhaul the agency’s outdated platform and develop a new enterprise platform to serve multiple office locations throughout the United States from the ground up.
Challenge
It is the responsibility of hundreds of government agents nationwide to interpret and process a vast amount of data using a web application with an outmoded user interface (UI) that was originally created to collect data without consideration for how users need to pull and analyze the data.
LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Transform the workflow of government agents with a new platform that allows them to collect and process data more accurately.
OUTPUT
The new UI is empowering government agents to process larger amounts of data more quickly and efficiently.
A sample of the synthesized survey data captured on August 2019.
Survey
In order to validate our assumptions, our team conducted a survey of our users to better understand our users. During this process, our team synthesized the survey data using a wide range of tools, such as Tableau. Based on the data received from our hundreds of users, we were able to identify our users’ needs and pain points.
Interviews
Our UX team traveled to multiple office locations to conduct interviews with our users, observe their behavior, and gather user feedback about the current platform. We recorded the time it took for them to execute specific tasks and noted pain points. These findings were crucial as we defined user requirements for the new platform.
Competitive Analysis
Analysis of our quantitative and qualitative data allowed us to craft a modern UI design that will transform the process of pulling and analyzing data for the better. In our competitive analysis, we examined and dissected existing enterprise platforms currently being used by other public and private companies. We then created an affinity map that captured all the desired and most-used UI elements.
One of our early design concepts.
Design
Achieving the right visual fidelity is a challenge on projects that involve government users and stakeholders. When the project kicked off in July 2019, the inability of our users and stakeholders to understand the purpose of low fidelity wireframes became recurring obstacle. When we identified this issue, we adapted to our clients’ limitations by designing higher fidelity wireframes, as well as interactive wireframes to enhance our user experience testing efforts.
Prior to Launch
Thanks to deep collaboration between our UX and development team, we were able to successfully deliver a fully functioning prototype of the new enterprise platform on time. The UX research conducted at the beginning of 2019 allowed us to understand our users and deliver a new platform tailor-made for them. User acceptance testing showed that approximately 92% of users and stakeholders reported high satisfaction.
.…And Beyond
We approached this challenge with a commitment to understanding our users. Our research efforts were critical to our success in delivering a working, user-accepted prototype. We continue to use this finely honed process of design thinking in an Agile environment in order to fine-tune the prototype with minimal delays. Given our current pace, we are expecting a production-ready platform with all or most the features built-in within a year.