SymSoft Solutions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our foundation is the auxiliary non-profit of a Community College Chancellor's Office. The Foundation forges new connections with private philanthropy and state agencies interested in leveraging the reach of the community colleges, and conducts technical assistance at the request of the Chancellor's Office.

My role as a senior director in the communications and technology division meant I was the project manager who worked closely with SymSoft to define and execute the project.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SymSoft Solutions?

We hired SymSoft Solutions to help our team upskill our user experience and user-centered design capabilities. We were asked to conduct user interviews about a college accountability data dashboard, the Student Success Metrics, to evaluate its perception by college researchers, leaders, and stakeholders, its overall usability. Then, propose design enhancements to increase user experience and comprehension of its data insights.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

SymSoft was selected based on their competencies in user research and user-centered design demonstrated during a redesign of the Chancellor's Office website and our positive experience working with their firm over previous consulting contracts.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Their team conducted stakeholder interviews to understand the history and purpose of the data dashboard, as well as its use by researchers through interviews with informal project advisors. From there, the team proposed user research plans, which were approved by the project champions. I defined and recruited users with my knowledge of the field, and Symsoft conducted user interviews and analyzed results.

Initial insights were presented to project champions and developers, who gave input on desired changes based on the research. SymSoft then designed low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes of a new user flow and user experience. New designs were tested again with users for comparison, additional feedback was incorporated.

The final artifact was delivered to our project champion, and tools were provided to developers for implementation. Symsoft also participated in advisory committee discussions about the roadmap of the future state of the tool, supporting the preparation by producing low-fidelity wireframes for discussion and participating in committee discussion.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

My team worked directly with the project lead/lead designer and user experience researcher. The firm's owner and CEO also participated in some high-visibility meetings and provided her perspective from other contexts and similar past projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The current design was assessed with user research and then a clickable prototype was created and tested again with users. Design decisions felt less subjective and stakeholders felt confident new designs were a quantifiable improvement with end users. Ad hoc advising and consulting was also very useful for our team when project planning for the future roadmap of the tool.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project lead proactively communicated and demonstrated the ability to work agilely and in a more structured (waterfall) way when the situation warranted it. They were open to feedback from me and my team as well as our main stakeholders.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

From the beginning, they took great care to understand the stakeholders of the project and uncover any sensitivities about the project in advance, which helped quickly understand the context and unstated assumptions or purposes of an accountability dashboard.

While they have in-house developers, they did not have any issues working with another vendor development team and worked to surface known constraints early. Their design sensibilities made immediate improvements to the data visualization project. When needed, wireframes could be rapidly created in a day or two. User experience research was also condensed in easily digestible metrics for executive leadership.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Since this was an academic audience, I copy edited the final user research report. However, I didn't mind doing this since they brought such deep expertise in web design and complimentary skillsets. This was a complex project where there was turnover from our main project champion, and the SymSoft team lead did a great job educating new stakeholders as they came onboard.