No one could see how these would work together, or see any similarities between the findings at all. This sparked the main, age old question. “How will someone use this software, if even we cannot image how to use it?”

Got to start somewhere right.

In order to to get the ball rolling on this, i knew i would need to start researching all the work packages on what & how they could possibly show their findings. This leads to create a mockup of what we could create. This will help get the team thinking about how they will display their finding to end users, not just internal ones. This will also start to flesh out some of the challenges we are going to face with all these pieces needing to fit together to create a usable product for the intended users.

• How did the user perform the task we are trying to solve in the past? - They used 3 or more different pieces of software & data points to get their answer.
• How many ways was the data displayed? - The data way displayed in 4 or more different ways across the platforms, with different interactions each time.
• How much time did this take a user to complete their action? On average, this would take a user 30 mins - 1 hour to open all the applications and find all the information they needed.
• How much training did users to need use the previous method? A user previously needed to have training from a senior colleague in order to know how to perform these tasks.

After explaining the issues discovered, myself and our work packaged was empowered to create a solutions for these complex problems.

Taking initiative - Starting with the park rangers

As the lead on UX for this project, it was upto me to find the intended users of this platform, and see just how they currently work. This led me to contact & conduct some user interviews with park rangers as they have been identified as a potential user of this product, we was also lucky enough to meet them in person too. This research method really helped me identify how a user thinks whilst conducting these tasks, and how our product can help improve their day to day.

I believe every great product is founded on great research. It is the backbone of the process and really help drive the team towards a common goal that we can stand behind together.

Mapping out the park rangers journey

Using insights from our research, we then mapped out every stage of the park rangers journey, including our user's pain points, time consumers and frustrations.

Then we asked ourselves, "What would it look like if we took all of the low points in this journey and improved them?"

This process enabled us to step back, see the big picture, and identify potential areas for growth and improvement.

Rethinking functionality

The previous products used to perform these tasks were useful to those that could use them read them, but this was very difficult for anyone who couldn’t read lecture literature or hadn’t been trained to use software that could do simple things like visualise data. I wanted to show the team how focusing and designing with the user in mind could help unlock new value.

Simplifying workflows and navigation

A lot of the previous ways of performing tasks where all done on single applications to show 1 type of results, however users would need access to multiple application to make a decision. This meant we needed to consolidate information together in a simple to use way, for the user to get the information they would need.

From nobody to anybody

Of course, simplifying the existing workflows wasn't enough. We had to push ourselves to innovate and think about the future, solving new pain points and filling in the gaps of our user's land management journey.

The crowning event of the vision was asking ourselves, "What if we didn't just help policy makers to make their decision, but could help anyone manage their land?"

Collaborating and refining the vision

I am a firm believer in the fact transparency, collaboration and iteration. Instead of waiting to show the “finished” vision, i prefer to be transparent and iterative as possible when creating a design. On a weekly basis I brought all the work packages in the project together to show the progress made as well as sending out updates for everyone in the team to see.

This way of working changed people thought from just discussions, to seeing our combined vision on paper, well virtual paper.

This approach allowed the creation process to be collaborative and engaging. Anyone on the team could input their ideas, challenge current designs or provide us with a connection who could help provide user feedback. We made a point of reaching out to users every 2 months for their feedback.

The team had a shared understanding of the problems within their sector and could see the solution in the product vision, but a looming chasm remained. How would we get there? Where would we even start?

This has to be iterative

When it comes to developing a strategy, our company was tasked with designing and developing the platform from the ground up. But the thing is, this was a new area of design and development for the company so we had to learn as we went along.

This needs to be an research and iterative process, which meant we needed to understand which problems we were going to tackle first. We also had to collaborate with the other work packages to understand their requirements and what that meant for our design.

After working closely with the subject matter experts and leaders of the other work packages, I was able to break down and combine their requirements into 7 key areas that needed to be designed for.