Cloud & Ground: Get your UX files under control

There are tons of tools that manage communication for design projects (Basecamp, Wrike, etc.). Developers have Github and such and even the visual designers have Layervault. The multifaceted nature of UX work doesn’t really lend itself to a clean singular solution. Stakeholder interviews have Evernote audio files and notes, wireframes could be in Omnigraffle, Balsimiq or Indesign. Prototypes could be a local Axure file, or shared via something like Beanstalk. This doesn’t even touch on shared google docs for competitive analysis and general collaboration. Just to add to the mayhem we can add in some loose .png images of whiteboard sessions.

ARGH!! SO MUCH INFORMATION!!

First and foremost this is a management issue. Somebody needs to have a strong voice to wrangle all of this things and have the will to implement a solution. Our assumption is that there is leadership with the will and commitment to address the issue, the question is how to bring all of these things together?

Using a service called CloudHQ I am able to provide a system that gives designers the freedom to continue along as they want to work but the backend and sync advantages that turn a messy on-boarding and archive process into an elegant samba of seamless productivity. Gone is the “Where is that file?” and their ilk…designers are unleashed to focus on solving the client’s problems and no longer are bumped out of the “zone” because they have all the project information right at their fingertips.

If you are interested in the more detailed information flow you can check out this PDF (43k).

Do you see what I see?

The contextual inquiry/user interviews were really for gathering a clear view of the production process. I was able to build a solid foundation for what this application needed to do, but more than that I was able to see how they are currently successful. Every one of Tom’s team was incredibly passionate about their work and they used their years of experience to make decisions on the fly in the constantly shifting demands of a commercial kitchen. This application needs to track all of the custom order nuances, while still giving the prep cooks some amount of autonomy. If this tool turned their job into a paint by numbers exercise it would be a failure.

*rubs hands together*

Mapping out all of the input collected helps me to get my hands around the building blocks of the project, and provides a great talking point for discussions with the developer. I will walk through this map with Tom to verify that we both see the general process in the same way and to make sure that I didn’t miss any major input points. I will take his feedback and the developer and use that to build a feature list.

SOLUTIONEERING!

Let’s get our prep on

Since we had verified that this as a valid and potentially successful project for all parties, it was time to begin the discovery process. I had previously helped Tom set up his Shopify site, so I was familiar with his product line-up.

White Oak Fresh 2 U Product description:

8 distinct menus consisting of 7-8 items each
Each menu based around a culinary theme and his extensive recipe library
Each menu is influenced by ingredients that are local and in season

What I was missing how it actually all came together and ended up in his clients’ kitchens. Who did what, and how did they do it?

Step one: Get over to his kitchen on a production day and see how the sausage was made (no sausage was on the menu today).

We found a day that worked for everybody and his staff all took a few minutes out of their busy afternoon to walk me through:

What they do
How they do it
What works well about the current method
What they wished worked better

The wish list was relatively short, because nobody wanted to be seen as just complaining. They are a tight-knit group and have worked their collective asses off to get to where they are. Their system might not be the most elegant, but with lots of double-checking and teamwork they manage to turn out a fantastic array of dishes every week for their grateful clients. I didn’t expect much from the wish list because they only know what they have seen. They go to bed thinking about jasmine rice and portabella mushrooms, not form label positions and order taxonomies.

In typical interview fashion, I heard expected things and unexpected things. Something I had not thought of was the mindset of the cooks working on Tom’s team. They are all highly trained and can think on the fly. Each one had created little notes to help them with each service, and most of them consulted with Tom before service to tweak and polish the menu based upon available ingredients, and the general makeup of the week’s orders. Whatever came out of this system needed to solidly augment what they were doing without taking away all of the opportunity for the personal investment they were all putting into their dishes.

Between the observation and the recorded interviews (yeah Evernote!) I have a good foundation to start mapping out all the data ingress and egress. Next, I will map that out and review with my developer to start building a base feature list. I feel like the big challenge will be keeping V1 from scope creep and dragging out the timeline.

There is just sooooo much UXing to do!