William Key

My Approach

As the sole UX designer (or designer of any type), I collaborated closely with the engineering teams, project managers, system integrators, the system requirements team, and additional temporary staff engaged at my urging (e.g. a visual designer).

Since it was impossible to interview target users, I persuaded C3 to let me interview Technical Information Officers (TIOs), Engineers, and Systems Requirements staff to better understand the context of use for the C3 products.

Based on insights learned during interviews, I performed a usability analysis for five products. I also identified internal issues that were negatively affecting product design. To provide guidance for engineering staff, I created a 21-page usability checklist as a reference to address many common usability issues for the different types of user interfaces they developed. (A few pages shown below)

After my initial report, C3 expanded my scope of work to integrate user-centered design processes into all C3 product design and development.

Initially, I was perceived as the outsider brought in by leadership to tell engineers what they were doing wrong. I worked to overcome their early resistance by positioning myself as a partner. Among my many efforts at engagement, I began usability testing and included the engineers to increase their trust in the resulting recommendations. The response was so positive, that I was asked to conduct a workshop to teach other staff the Steve Krug-style DIY usability testing.

During my interviews I learned that the staff groups I interviewed all had different ideas about the target users for C3 products. I also learned that engineers sometimes made design decisions based on wanting to try out a new technology. There seemed to be an assumption that any product they built could be deployed to any asset anywhere in the world without consideration for the target users' very different contexts. To address these assumptions and highlight the resulting problems they presented, I led a persona workshop with engineers so they could realize the importance of being more thoughtful about the target users for each product. (An example persona shown below)

Other engagement activities included running co-design sessions for product UIs, providing guidelines and examples for improving product technical documentation using UX writing and Plain Language, and more. I also created a wall poster of the user-centered design process outside my office and encouraged staff to contribute to the diagram indicating C3-specific control gates, processes, etc. where they fit within the overall product development process. I then added notes for how UX could support product teams at each stage.

For a product that was a version 2.0 of a communication tool for technical officers, the feedback was enthusiastic but caveated with commentary that the updated product was such a huge improvement that the users were now more aware of the ways it was less "polished" in appearance. This allowed me to bring in a visual designer to elevate the UI design to be on par with commercial software, something C3 had never aspired to do until users began to view the quality of their products more positively. (Style guide excerpt below)

Ultimately, all these activities helped to increase trust and collaboration with C3 staff and contributed to our ability to improve C3 products.