Cisco Rich Media On Demand
Overview
The Rich Media On Demand project would unify disparate sources of learning content within Cisco Systems into a single platform, with sophisticated personalization controls providing the most relevant content to users and enabling "cross publication" of content to other portals as needed.
The Process
The process to translate their requirements into functional requirements for our Engineering department to provide estimates on began with detailed reviews of their lengthy, detailed Business Requirements Document. These requirements were broken out into related groups of functionality, mapped out into "phases" mapping loosely to our Product Roadmap.
Over the next few weeks, a large number of regular meetings were conducted to further explore particular requirements, and to the functional designs as they evolved. During this process, common HCI and PM principles were employed to...
- Identify User Personas
- Form stereotypes of the users with the system to use in design, development and QA processes.
- Articulate the Problem
- Use task analysis to map out the goals and tasks involved in any particular feature, forming the basis of User Stories.
- Craft Conceptual Model
- Hone in on the conceptual model that will bridge the gap between the user's background and how they will interact with the system.
- Design UI
- Craft mockups showing all major functionality with emphasis on information architecture and good design guidelines to make sure the UI is clear to the user.
- Validate
- Static mockups used to validate basic features, with low fidelity prototypes (mockup animations) used to show more complex interactions.
The Solution
The scope of the RMoD project was much more vast than can be articulated here. But there are two key areas that posed interesting UX challenges shown in the attached mockups.
Inline Editing
Much of the RMoD project's "new" requirements revolved around the lifecycle of content within the system — from the moment it was imported to the time it was purged from the system, years later. The first series of mockup illustrates the method used for editing "Sessions" within the system, incorporating the following:
- Edit Dialog
- Instead of providing both a front-end for normal users and a backend management system for Editors (as we had done in the legacy platform), a more modern approach integrating the functionality into the frontend through discreet "Edit Dialogs" was used. Clicking on an "Edit" button anywhere in the interface brings up options relevant to that object.
- Tabbed Interface
- Instead of providing pages and pages of editing options, sound HCI grouping principles were employed to separate options into distinct sections.
- Role-Based Options
- The tabbed interface was also employed to provide a "clean" way to expose some options only to certain users.
Home Page Panel Editing
Given its nature as an enterprise-wide solution, another key requirement was the ability for Portal Administrators to customize the interface for groups of users. This was accomplished by providing an "Edit" capability for the "Welcome" page of the portal, with each "Panel" being editable.
- User Spoofing
- Portal Administrators would be given the ability to "spoof" certain classes of users, temporarily giving them the ability to see what a user of a particular class would see. Their own role would then allow them to enter the "Edit" mode for that class of user.
- Inline Editing
- This feature was also exposed through discreet edit buttons, providing consistency with the overall Editing strategy. In this case, the button was exposed solely as an icon to allow it to fit in a more constrained space.
- Panel-Specific Options
- In order to provide flexibility in the types of Panels, each could have its own set of options according to its needs.
Texas Instruments Training Center
Overview
Texas Instruments come to us needing a platform to base their entire Training strategy around, including a means for learners to access In-Person Training, Online (live) Training as well as Video OnDemand content. This project was created to provide them a solution based around our next-generation platform, vSearch Cloud.
The Process
This process began with TI's well-articulated, lengthy set of Product Requirements supported by a set of wireframes. In this case, their UX team provided a design that combined elements from our old platform with the new platform, so careful effort was used to translate that into the design language and capabilities of the new platform.
This project was a bit unusual, given we were working within the TI UX process as well as our own to collaborate on the final solution. Thankfully TI's own UX team was able to leverage their own resources to take care of usability testing, which was quite helpful.
In this case, the process was a bit different than how I'd approach a "from scratch" solution...
- Resolve UI Consistency Issues
- Resolve inconsistencies between TI wireframes and what is possible in the new platform.
- Articulate the Problem
- Use task analysis to straighten out the details of the "new" features to determine what was needed vs. what included because it was in the old platform.
- Adopt Conceptual Model
- Much of the Conceptual Model was communicated by TI, which had validated and fine-tuned it based on paper prototype-based usability testing.
- Design UI
- As usual, mockups were crafted showing all major functionality — in this case, TI's branding was integrated from their mockups into the design.
- Test/Validate
- Testing was done by TI's UX team through paper prototypes to straighten out the Conceptual Model, with final UX design validated through our mockup process.
The Solution
In the end, this project introduced two new concepts into the vSearch Cloud platform, building upon the flexible data model architected early on in its development for such occasions.
- In-Person Training
- Appeared with Date/Time and Locations and a "Registration" link that took users to a 3rd party registration system so that users could attend training in-person.
- Online Training
- Appeared with Date/Time for live training that would occur over a web-conference of some sort.
- Content Listing Filters
- Accompanying the new types of training with an emphasis on the "live" and sometimes "in-person" nature of the content, filters were added to allow the user to pare down listings to just content occuring locally to them at certain times.
