Hook & Loop is the in-house branding agency for the multinational, industry-specific enterprise software company Infor. I was hired as their first Information Architect. I worked directly with the Creative Director and the UI designers, and I wrote frequently for the company Medium channel.
Three days of live research
While Infor has a tradition of in-depth user research methods for its product development, there was no process for doing quick, iterative website tests with a large number of users at once.
When Inforum, the company's largest annual convention, was being planned in 2016, I asked if I could run some formal user testing there. I created and oversaw Infor's first live user testing lab. This offered attendees—both customers and Infor's executives—a tangible way to participate in and appreciate our user-centered design process.
I and other IAs ran 96 tests total, for five separate Infor products. I also launched a pilot program for quick user testing, the Beta Tester Community. This program invites participants to offer feedback on new designs via short browser-based testing exercises. The program grew over the following year to over 480 participants, who can participate in user tests at any time during product development. (I wrote about the pop-up testing on the company's Medium channel.)
More information, fewer documents
Concerned that producing separate prototypes, design specs, and requirements documents caused a fractured understanding of the product among team members, I surveyed my visual designers and front- and back-end developers about their learning styles. I came to understand that a resource that integrated the visual design mockup, demos of interactivity, and written notations could provide what everyone needed in a single place.
I took on this challenge in 2017, before more sophisticated prototyping platforms like Figma existed. I experimented with platforms like InVision and UXPin (which integrated with Sketch and Craft) and developed a process to add requirements notes to the prototypes that were built and delivered to our development and QA teams.
I created a template in Sketch that could be added as a clickable layer of notes to an InVision prototype in the same way that I built the hotspots that illustrate the interactivity. To see this layer of notes, I added a button that "turned on" the notes over the prototype. (Later, when UXPin added notations to their platform, I experimented with this same concept using their software.)
The team began using the InVision Comments functionality to discuss the design, rather than having to bring separate documentation to a meeting. This new workflow reduced development time by about a week, and reduced the number of follow-up calls to verify interactivity. (I wrote about this innovation process on the company's Medium channel.)