Educational Simulation Tool

The purpose of the project was to create an MVP of the simulation experience for Project Management students

Tools and Activities

Requirements Gathering , Creating Design System, Creating Wireframes, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Tools: Figma, Google docs, WebEx

Duration

Dec 2019- Aug 2020

My role

UX team leader
2 UX designers, 1 Project Manager

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The project goal was to create an MVP of the Project Management simulation tool. I was hired to lead a UX team. My cross-functional team included a product owner, project managers, front-end and back-end developers. We worked in close collaboration with professors, experts and project management students to make sure we create a powerful yet user-friendly system.

The main purpose of the tool:

to help PM students in developing the required competencies for a competitive market
to help industry professionals to train project practitioners

PROBLEM

New graduate project managers experience a wide range of unique challenges in the course of managing a project. The main challenge is they miss a hands-on practice of managing a project as they will do in real life. To effectively prepare students aspiring to become successful project managers, the development of an educational simulation tool has been initiated by Humber College (Toronto, Canada).

METHODOLOGY

To accomplish the project goal we worked in a hybrid of Lean (for early stages) and Agile (for later stages) environment. We used an incremental approach and divided the team into 7 subteams to work in close collaboration. The project schedule included:

stand-ups for the subteams
weekly team meetings
bi-weekly sponsor reviews
2 week sprints
24*7 slack availability
online shared docs

The main challenge for the UX team was the low UX maturity of the leadership. Being a UX team lead, I’ve tried to make the design process as flexible as possible to eliminate the stress level. I’ve introduced several high-level rules which helped us successfully embrace an Agile workflow.

navigate ambiguity
spend enough time on outreach our colleagues
change is a constant, take it as an expected input

Discovery

For the product to stand out in a competitive market, we had to define our users and the competitive advantage. In compliance with the business requirements, the system should not have any similarities with existing solutions. However, it should be aligned with PMBOK (guidelines for project management), applying common UI and Information Architecture practices to match users’ mental models.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We’ve conducted a competitive analysis to get insights into the main features, functions, and flows used by the competitors. The main competitor was the system currently used by Humber students, PTB simulation tool. It has its drawbacks and not perfect UX, but users were familiar with the flow, so we had to consider it to eliminate the learning curve.

MAPPING GOALS AND RISKS

We started off with collaboration workshops with the main stakeholders. The outcomes of the multiple meetings were the long-term goals, short-term goals, project road map and list of risks.

The long-term goal was focused on how to lead the project to success through providing value to end-users, while the short-term goal was focused on how to make the product attractive to investors. Providing great user experience was also a must have condition for the project.

The short-term goal was to help stakeholders to answer critical questions:

Will the product save funds for the College?
Will the product improve the College reputation?
Will the product help students to get on hands knowledge?

While goals reflect an optimistic attitude, it is always good to look a possible down side and consider potential risks.

The main risk was that the team included full-time students, who was only available part-time for the project. The second part of this risk was that we missed experience and expertise. Even though the Humber College profs led the PM students and the dev team, we still had not have enough assigned resources to meet the requirements.

As we proceed, we understood that we didn’t consider another risk- management stakeholders. We spent an excessive amount of time on getting the stakeholders’ sign-off. To address this issue, we were trying to keep all the relevant stakeholders involved and conducted working sessions on a regular basis.

To identify our users, we had to think about the ultimate product and the MVP. The MVP only becomes a product once it gets investment. Thus our users were not only PM students and professors but also investors. We defined 2 main user groups: direct and indirect users. The PM students and professors were our direct users. Investors were defined as the indirect users, who would need to see the product attractive for the investment. When it came to the MVP scope and features prioritization, promoting the product to investors was defined as a high priority.

Next, we’ve reviewed and mapped out the project vision and the high-level business requirements. We’ve considered the MVP goal, available resources and timeline. The map appeared to be complex.

The team confirmed 3 main scenarios to be implemented within the MVP: industry selection, project planning and running the project.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND FEATURE LIST

Building informational architecture (IA) and the feature list helped the team to structure a pile of knowledge and requirements which we had. The UX team created the IA based on the gathered requirements and selected scenarios.

STEP INTO USER'S SHOES

To align our assumptions with users’ needs and expectations, we decided to literally step into our users’ shoes by attending Project Management classes.

TASK ANALYSIS

Before the product concept generation phase, we’ve mapped out the main user tasks based on the existing solutions and considering the requirements we had. This highlighted the main pain points and drawbacks, which now we were able to avoid.

Design

We worked in 2-week sprint with the deployment every 2nd week. The UX/UI team was always 1 sprint ahead of the development sprint to avoid blockers.

We used Figma for design. It allows real-time collaboration for designers and the rest of the team had access and was able to comment. I’ve also created a shareable team library. So we kept the system consistent.

PROTOTYPING

Once the high-fidelity design was created for the main user flow, I’ve initiated a demo session for the team, including stakeholders. We’ve created the prototype for the registration and selecting industry flows. My goal was to visualize the user behaviour and give the team feeling of the future system. I find rapid prototyping a very powerful tool. As a result the internal stakeholders requested the prototype to be included into the presentation to investors. The presentation secured additional round of financing for the project.

Validation

USABILITY TESTING

Before developing the design, we need to conduct usability testing of the critical user flows. I’ve insisted on running 5 usability testing sessions. It was crucial to validate the UX and uncover potential issues at the early stage.
We’ve recruited 5 project management students to participate in the remote usability testing.
We’ve created the directed answer-oriented test task we wanted to test specific flows rather than concepts.
It was moderated test with the facilitator (myself), 2 observers (field expert, professor), the notetaker (UX designer). We enjoyed all the advantages of the facilitated sessions. We’ve slightly changed the task on the go, asked the follow-up questions, and got useful insights

To turn our notes into findings, we’ve created an affinity diagram to categorize insights and then we’ve determined the severity of our findings.

Most of the users passed the task successfully. Minor frustrations were caused by the layout, which was different from what students used to while using the existing tools. Another issue that was covered was a misused tooltip. We’ve fixed the discovered issues and the design was handed over to the development team.

Takeaways

Stakeholders management is crucial to gain a mutual understanding of the objectives and expectations of all parties. Always start this process from day one.
Test the design. Conduct usability testing before handing it over to development. This will help to spot the potential issues at an earlier stage.
Iterate the design. Abandon the ideas, which showed to be issued for users at an earlier stage. Even though they seem valuable.