How might we track design and research insights?

You’re in a product team, you’re churning out serious volumes of prototypes and research, links are being sent to a number of different team members and Google docs are getting lost. Questions like, where is …? do you remember that document ..? which version ..? Hang on, let me check my G drive, keep getting asked …

Does all of the above sound familiar? It sure does to me, so here’s how I created a single source of research and design authority.

The need to track and surface user research

User research, no matter how little or large, should always be visible, clear and easily digestible to anyone who reads it. It is extremely easy to lose sight of what a user needs, rather than what they want, as the project develops. Having user research insights anchored in a centralised location, which every single member of the team has a view of, will only aid user centered design, as opposed to opinion or biased based design.

How do you create a single source of truth?

So where do you start on a single source of authority of design and research decisions? Google docs and spreadsheets? Both can be used to a certain extent, but what I’ve observed and found with digital documents, is how often certain artefacts get lost or forgotten about after being shared once or twice.

Another aspect is the level of engagement static documents receive; once shown, the slide deck or word document most likely won’t receive the same level as attention again. The way I sought to tackle this problem, based around the type of government project I was on, was to use the GOV.UK Prototyping Kit, however the same interface and methodology can be implemented in the more mainstream prototyping tools like Figma, Sketch and AdobeXD.

The following are the underlying use cases for the design and research tracker:

Primary users:

1. User researchers: To view, document and track the latest UR status and insights.
2. UX and Content designers: To provide an overview of the latest designs and respective design justifications.
3. Stakeholders: To have a clear overview of the progress of each design and see which designs are signed off, awaiting sign off, or blocked.

Secondary users:

1. Wider team: A way for the wider team to see concise research insights as well as the latest designs.

Early wireframes of the research and design tracker

After having discussions with the immediate and wider team members, initial sketches included:

1. Hero section of signed and awaiting sign off items as well as quick links to universally used artefacts.
2. An accordion component which contains every screen in the user journey.
3. A detailed view or page of the screens, which includes that specific screen’s UR status, sign off status and overall usability rating. In addition to the status flags, there’s an overview of what the screen is used for, specific design justifications and user research insights of:

• What is working for users?
• What isn’t working for users?
• Recommended next steps

A sketch of early ideas for the design and research tracker (v.1)

Version 2 of the design and research tracker

After publishing version 1 of the design and research tracker, feedback was the only thing I was after; was this working? Did users find this to be useful? Were users adopting this instead of trawling through google drive looking for research insights?

A general consensus within the product team was that this artefact and the fact that it’s all in one single location was something that proved to be useful for every level of profession. Stakeholders had an overview of what has been signed off and what hasn’t, user researchers can track and document research findings in one place and designers can refer to this as the latest version of their work.

However, as with anything, there is always room for improvement. Version 2 included:

1. A hero traffic light system that now includes a flagged section, showing all those screens that are a blocker in terms of design, research or sign off.
2. Collapsed detail components used to explain what depends on being signed off, what is awaiting sign-off and the definition of being blocked or flagged.
3. A tabbed accordion view, splitting high-level pages, granular sub-pages and quick links.

Version 2 sketches demonstrating the red, amber and green (RAG) system, with tabbed accordions

Version 3 of the design and research tracker

The design and research tracker was now becoming the single point of reference for all members of the team. Developers were viewing wireframes, mockups and accessing prototype links, user researchers were tracking and updating UR statuses, confidence levels and usability ratings and stakeholders had a clear, high-level view of the progress happening sprint to sprint.

However, as research increased, more and more insights were found and the user journey maps were either being added to, or having steps removed, this prompted the idea of scalability of the design and research tracker.

Accordions are a good way of holding collapsed information, but after collating feedback, it is obvious they quickly become obsolete when scalability is required. I needed to future-proof the tracker, so that no matter how many screens or research insights are made or found, the tracker would be able to accommodate them.

Version 3 included:

1. A separate page that includes information related to sign-off processes.
2. Replaced the accordion / split-accordion view with a filtered table.
3. Drop-down filters that include all possible filterable options within the user journey.

Version 3 sketches demonstrating how the design and research tracker prioritised scalability

Impact

• Research insights and latest designs were now all in a single place of authority.
• Entire product team and stakeholders became much more engaged with the progress of each design and the justifications behind them.
• Developers, designers and researchers across two product teams used the tracker as a single reference point of discussion and critique.
• Designers and researchers had a clear view and understanding of those screens that had usability issues and why.

Try it out for yourself

I’ve created an “MVP” version of the design and researcher tracker I made for the project I was involved in, feel free to explore and leave any feedback for any improvements to the tracker.

Visit our website: www.hippodigital.co.uk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hippodigitaluk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hippodigital/

If you want to chat, reach me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SulyyK

Design and Research Tracker (MVP) Playground: https://design-research-tracker.herokuapp.com/

username: design password: research