My first role in UX, designing digital products for the government
Editor’s note: Sanjana Gunaratne was a co-op student at the rapid prototyping lab in Kitchener-Waterloo during the spring semester. Co-op students are key team members helping make government work better for people by delivering simple and straightforward digital services and products. During placements at the ODS, we provide employees with constructive feedback to foster their career growth and opportunities to collaborate with talented people.
Designing digital services for people in Ontario has been a learning experience that I will never forget. This post is dedicated to the Ontario Digital Service, for helping me realize my potential.
As I reflect on my time at the rapid prototyping lab, I learned three main lessons:
- Be humble
- Test early with users
- Focus a lot on the process before thinking about the end product
Keep reading to find out how I learned these lessons.
1. Be humble
Before starting at the ODS, I had no professional design experience. My only exposure to design was from a personal project. Regardless of this, on my first day, I was eager to start and show off my skills.
The first product that the team worked on during my time at the ODS was to design a timeline showing the Premier’s progress towards achieving his mandate priorities.
I jumped at this chance to impress my mentor and supervisor, Xiaopu Fung, when we were asked to create mock-ups for this prototype. At the time, I thought that what I created was perfect. Not a single element was a pixel out of place. I made sure that the colours were nice, and I used the flashiest images.
When I showed Xiaopu what I created, she immediately asked “Sanj, what is this?!” I couldn’t justify my design. The only response I could give, when asked to explain my design was, “It just looked good to me”.
Panicked and confused, I went into a single study booth and really thought about the feedback that I received. She reminded me to have a content-first mindset. She explained that this means prioritizing the visual hierarchy and user’s experience — before thinking about how pretty the product looks.
With that in mind, I designed a few rough sketches. I prioritized the content structure, before considering details, like the best combination of colours and which icons to use.
When Xiaopu looked over my rough, unrefined mock-ups, she told me that the second iterations were better, and gave me feedback on how I could continue to improve my next designs .
It felt good knowing that I was headed in the right direction. But it felt great to overcome a failure, and understand where I went wrong.
The feedback that I got early on was crucial to my learning. I was able to pivot, and course correct, because I received honest feedback.
2. Test early with users
Our next product was designing a prototype that could improve the online application form to get disability support in Ontario. This product was intriguing to me because it was an opportunity to strengthen my design skills, and prototype a product for a user group that needs a better application process.
During the first week of the project, we researched the current application and located the user’s pain points. For the second week of the project, after ideating and creating a user journey map, we started to build wireframes.
After finishing a low-fidelity prototype, Xiaopu asked us to start scheduling usability testing sessions.
At this point, I wondered what we would test. How could we present this prototype to users? It didn’t even have colour, yet. I wasn’t entirely on-board with testing the low-fidelity prototype with users, but decided to go ahead with an open mind. When we tested the product with caseworkers who knew the ins and outs of the current application process, we learned that we were headed in the wrong direction.
Once again, my intuition was incorrect. I had just learned the importance of early testing.
Consider the following two scenarios and decide which you’d prefer:
Don’t test the wireframes, and proceed to create a high-fidelity prototype over the next few weeks, only to discover that you’re solving the wrong problem;
OR
Test the wireframes early on, and learn that you’ve been wrong in your assumptions, then start prototyping again, but pivot toward a better direction.
I think there is an obvious winner here.
3. Focus a lot on the process before thinking about the end product
I can see that a lot of work goes into building digital products, after reflecting on my early design experiences.
Before my co-op placement, I would often predict the success of a product by how good it looked to me. Now, I know that a product can’t be successful, if the user of that product doesn’t have a good experience.
Understanding how to measure the success of a good product may be obvious to experienced designers. But it took a few failures before it really clicked with me. I realized that the process guiding how a team builds, iterates, and incorporates user feedback into a prototype is more important than the overall look of any product.
The design process is critical to any product’s success, so I’d like to share a short summary of our team’s approach when we start a new project.
1. Discovery
In my opinion, this is the most important phase. It is when you learn the why behind the problem.
2. Ideation
Consider everything you learned in Discovery, and start brainstorming possible solutions.
3. Wireframing
Create a low-fidelity prototype, which captures the desired user experience goals of the team.
4. High fidelity prototyping
Create the user interface (UI). This is when you focus on UI elements: colour combinations, imagery, accessibility, and other visual features.
5. Validation
In this stage, you observe reasons why your product is not as intuitive as you thought.
Disclaimer: Any UX project can change, instantly, with the addition of new information, so always be prepared to pivot. And always consider edge cases!
Leaving the nest
As a young designer, the lessons I learned at the ODS are priceless to me. I will be eternally grateful to Xiaopu for being candid, and telling me that my work needed improvement; rather than letting me continue to develop bad design practices.
I hope that other designers starting out in their careers have the opportunity to have a mentor who is a seasoned designer. And have support from an organization that cares about their employee’s personal growth.
