OVERVIEW

According to CIDRAP report, there are 20.6 million people who lost their jobs since mid of March resulting in an unemployment rate of 14.7%, a level not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. On top of that there are still as many as 12 million Americans still have not received their stimulus payment, unemployment benefit and rent relief. The design aims to serve as a communication bridge between government and citizens, tackling every major issue, serving as a personal government assistant to enhance on user care and quality assurance.

The Problem

Everyday, there are countless people on the line, waiting for hours and hours to reach government representatives.

The Goal

The goal is to build a mobile app to serve as a personal assistant that takes care of all users’ government needs in one place. The design emphasizes on communication, documentation and transparency by allowing users to file, track and update their cases at anytime and anywhere.

Tools

Sketch . Invision . Miro . Mural . Hand Sketching

Project Scale

2 Weeks Individual Project . Mobile IOS responsive app

THE PROCESS

DISCOVER

There is only 2.58% Conversion Rate of Online Shopper Worldwide

E-commerce has populated social media in recent years. It is obviously booming. But will it continue to grow at its current rate and how much opportunity is there? Pertaining to Statistia, only 2.58 percent of global e-commerce site visits were converted into purchases in the second quarter of 2019. This means, out of 34 online visitors, only one brought something. There are still 97.42% potential sales under the water, in other words, “ the sky is unlimited.”

I broke down the entire buying journey into four phases in terms of researching products, viewing product pages, reviewing carts, and applying payment. The data I collected shows the rate of cart abandonment reduces as the journey progresses, which means researching products and viewing product pages are key steps to turn indecisive shoppers into paying customers.

DEFINE

PERSONA - INTERVIEWS + AFFINITY MAPPING

During the interview I learned that it is crucial to constantly ensure the comfort of participants and to establish conversational flows that build up instant connections. This way enables participants to disclose their true feelings. Since my research aims at finding participant’s frustrations with government, therefore I was exposed to a lot of personal information during interviews. I realized some participants were feeling uneasy as I typed down while they were talking. I later switched my recording method, I would document the audio and consolidate key takeaways after interviews.

Wilson needs an efficient and transparent communication platform to fulfill her various government requests so that she can receive service sooner.

DESIGN

100% of people I interviewed associating government with the term of inefficiency. 100% of people had frustrated experiences with government before. 100% of people like to take initiative in terms of filing and tracking their requests to prevent unnecessary waste of time, energy and money. 90% of people chose to contact the government with a phone call because they want to receive instant responses. Ironically, people usually end up waiting in lines for hours, days and even months to reach representatives, ending up only get a vague answer.

I designed my wireframe and prototype features based on my interviews: - Optimize reviews: Inserting customer reviews on both homes and product pages enable new users to gain confidence in the brand and items. - Maximize reference prices: Showing original prices, current prices and discount percentage emphasize the gap between reference prices to boost up incentives to motivate customers to take actions. - Minimize tab openings: Enabling users to browse multiple items in different color on the same page to avoid Tab-hoarding fatigue. - Display Stock Availability: Demonstrating quantity scarcity gives shoppers an extra nudge to purchase without delay.

USABILITY TESTING

TASK: Can you file and track a case?

Completed? : 3/3 user complete the task. Time : user1 - 10s to file, 15s to track , user2 - 7s to file, 5s to track, user3 - 12s to file, 8s to track Number of errors: user1 - 2 errors , user2 - 2 errors, user3 - 3 errors

Observation: - 2/3 users scrolled down the home page before clicked on any button. - 2/3 user looked for a signifier after submitting their case - 3/3 users clicked on submit after they login - 3/3 users were not able to locate where to close the pop up chat window right away

CONCLUSION

The project directs me back to the concept of “ I am not my user.” The biggest take away was to make decisions based on research, data and analysis to achieve enhancement. The usability testing phase pushed me to realize “ less is more”. By including plethora of information can easily lead to extrinsic cognitive overload, making the user experience unnecessarily difficult and confusing. The next step is to emphasize signifiers and establish hierarchies of features on each frame and conduct another round of usability testing.