Project Spotlight: Intuitive Access to International Statistics

It’s not everyday that you get a project brief that goes something like this:

“Present the data from one of the world’s most reliable sources of international development statistics.”

The magnitude of the project seemed inconceivable at first glance, and its social and economic ramifications staggering. But I am happy to report that our work for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has become one of our most successful projects to date. I write this blog entry after-the-fact, the project has gone ‘live’ and you can read more about the OECD here and learn about the project itself from 2Paths, the company that hired us to conduct user research and design the user interface to drive this web application.

The project began back in November 2007, with 2Paths having initiated a detailed scoping and budget phase with the client. They decided early on to bring design experts on to the team to lead the interface development for this project.  DesignStamp joined in January and development was to begin in March.  Our task was to gather as much knowledge about the project as possible, from the work 2Paths had already done, the various user types identified and also understand business requirements from the client.

1. Our search for this knowledge meant doing extensive interviews with users from around the world who came in contact with OECD data for a variety of reasons. We conducted in-person interviews, phone interviews and also relied on video conferencing technology to be able to do small focus group style interviews.
2. We then made the trip to Paris, to gather business requirements from the OECD and echo our understanding of their vision, as well as what the end-users desired.  It was important that we speak with the staff that managed the current databases on international development statistics.  We learnt about the issues OECD development staff had in using the OECD.Stat interface and also documented queries from users.
3. This knowledge combined with our user research gave us enough information to be able to create the set of user personae (PDF) that would inform the rest of the project work ahead. The persona process is invaluable in helping not only help keep the end-user in mind when designing solutions but also lend focus to project scope.
4. We moved quickly from a lo-fi wireframing deliverable whereby we explained our proposed solution to the client using sketches, to high fidelity prototypes that enabled us to present click through scenarios and validate our approach based on common tasks that users may undertake to extract data from the interface.
5. Having received approval on the wireframes, we worked with the 2Paths development team and the client to hit 2 to 3 week iterations and tackle off user stories that helped us build components of the project in a priority sequence.
6. We worked with 2Paths to merge our design with their agile development process.  DesignStamp designers were kept a minimum of 2 weeks ahead of developer work, so that we could get client approval on the interface decisions and be ready with assets for developers to complete the user stories in time.

Lessons learned from this project:

1. One of our big wins was to align ourselves with the client from the get-go and work with them as partners trying to solve the problem. We took the time to understand the “pain”, and appreciate their goals before we started to do any design work.
2. The time 2Paths spent educating the client on how an agile development process works was worth the effort. Having client buy-in was invaluable, as they knew what to expect, what not to expect and just how we would tackle off the project in incremental bits. 2Paths did a great job managing this.
3. The OECD was the perfect client in many ways. Perfect client=Accommodating, collaborative and open to providing us with the knowledge we needed to do our job well.
4. The agile process works only when the client, and the entire team appreciate the benefit of frequent deliverables. It was also important that designers were kept 2 weeks ahead of the developer work, so that we could have time to work on, and gain approval on interface decisions, prior to the developers needing graphic assets.
5. Modern communication tools helped our global team produce a global project. Say what you will but the project would have been severely impacted if we could not rely on web conferencing and being able to share our desktops in Vancouver with a client in Paris. We had weekly check-in points to keep the client in the loop at all times. Remote conferencing was invaluable for that (even if it meant that the Vancouver team was bleary eyed, attending conference calls at 7 am in the morning!).

This project tested our process by the shear magnitude of the design brief. This project has proved to us once again, that we don’t just create good looking work; we solve problems. We do so by following a user-centric design process that marries business objectives with user goals. And at the end of the project, our biggest rewards: The glowing testimonials from the client and the users who have tested our new interface. You can view our design solution for this project here or contact us if you would like to learn more about our process for solving complex business problems.