Our initial stakeholder requirements raised some concerns.
We were instructed to present the network health information as a number score and were given the example below. A bunch of questions immediately popped into mind.
I argued that this wasn’t the most effective method and after further discussion with my Design Lead and Product Owner, I was given the freedom to play around with other ways to display the network health data.
We wanted to focus on providing the most pertinent data that was relevant to the user.
Initial product requirements outlined 5 metrics that we wanted to display: modem speed, device speed, latency, connection stability and number of connected devices. After some research I did on network health metrics, I started questioning a few of the outlined metrics. My Product Owner emphasized the desire to show “Comcast” problems as opposed to user problems because the former we could provide more concrete information. I suggested removing a few that didn’t fit this goal such as device speed and introducing others like service interruption status.
This idea to provide a high-level understanding of a user’s network in a simple score quickly proved to be challenging.
My Design Lead instructed me that we wanted this to be a dynamic feature. To selectively display the information that would be most important for the user and hiding information that may seem contradictory based on their situation.
After attempting to jump into low fidelity wireframes and quickly getting stuck, it was apparent I needed to take a step back and understand how this feature was going to fit into the larger Business Internet dashboard. I began writing ‘stream of consciousness’ entries to collect my thoughts. I clarified the overall purpose of the feature and then had to understand how to communicate the different combinations of metrics. This process challenged me to think deeply into the story we wanted to tell the users about their network.
I was then able to define a metric logic chart that contained the rules of what information to show/hide in every possible scenario.
With my clear understanding, I moved onto designing.
We ended up with high fidelity screens of all of the possible situations.
I collaborated with our UX Researcher to create a moderated usability test to see how users interpreted the data we were showing them.
We wanted to see how the order and different combinations of metrics affected their understanding of the larger story we were trying to tell them about their network.
