• The admin dashboard provides a way to monitor, analyze, and control the security settings that are in place to protect the apps and data.

  • THE TRAVESTY!
    Just Kidding... Kind of...
    Not Really.

    Before

    After

    As I concurrently worked on the iOS and Android apps, I also managed the process of redesigning the admin web portal. We redesigned the interface from scratch, taking into consideration the needs via user research.

    Below we will walk through segments of the redesign I thought were important or milestones.

  • 1
    Pitching a Redesign to the Stakeholders

    • Summary/TLDR: I worked with our product manager and pushed for a ground up redesign of the administrator portal while concurrently supporting active customers. I held a gamestorming SWOT analysis to allow the stakeholders to make an informed decision, and ultimately achieved their buy in.

      The existing Bluebox administrator portal was in dire need of a redesign (as you can see from above). However, our customers continuously kept pressure on us with new features. There were no possibilities in stopping the product to have a revamp. In efforts to achieve stakeholder buy in, I had to prove that a redesign was worth the cost and effort of concurrent design and development. I had to be strategic and utilized a SWOT Analysis to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in redesigning the admin portal.


    • Existing Issues:


    • By leveraging user testing, I was able reveal a major issue. The existing interface was poor for large data consumption. However, fixing the issue, would require modifying the underlying model of the interface, this design change would affect many screens all together. If we were going to make such a big change anyway, this was an opportune time to stage a redesign. That was the angle I had pitched.

    • There were plaguing usability issues and awkward workflows which required an overhaul. This was yet another good reason for a redesign, solely because some issues could not be remedied by small bandaid fixes.

    • Visually, the product began without a style guide and elements were full of inconsistencies in sizing, typography, colors, and usage. These internal and external complaints would be all rectified by the redesign.


    • Positives:

    • We would continue to enhance features the customers love. The large set of data,

    • Conveyed the opportunities that were possible


    • Results:

    • Provided enough reasons in the positive direction that the cost is worth the efforts and achieved their buy in to the vision

    • '

  • 2
    Setting Revamp goals

    • Better utilization of horizontal space

    • Meaningful charts to the administrator

    • A clean modern interface that allows the administrator to focus on large amounts of data

  • 3
    Understanding our different Administrator Personas

    We had 3 different admin personas for our product, which of course differed from our 2 personas for the mobile app end users. The big boss needed really high level overview of the product and full control. A main admin who would take care more most of the day to day duties of the product. Finally, an occasional administrator who would help facilitate very specific tasks. By understanding each of their needed we crafted the product from a top down approach to satisfy each of their needs at different points.

  • 4
    Providing the user with meaning information

    Meeting with customers, I discovered many admin uses cases. Their ideas flowed almost as fast as their imagination could pitch the thought. I started to narrow and focused on how they currently used our product. By assessing their workflows, I was able to discover common similar MUST have with their mindset of management. The users wanted overview statistics in an easy to consumable percentage that with the sufficient drill downs. Not useless counts that don't mean anything.

    5
    Multi variations of the design

    A single design is never good enough, by having multiple variation we can compare against each version. We had a total of 4 variations. Light, dark, mixed, and an alternate layout. We reviewed the layouts against the goals.

    Internally as a team we narrowed it down to two layouts. The light and mixed layout. We pitched both schemes to stake holder and received customer feedback. The dark user interfaces place much focus on the charts and was too strenuous on the eyes.

  • 6
    DESPERATE NEED OF A STYLE GUIDE AND PATTERNS

    Working with our designer, once we achieved the stakeholder buy in on a color and layout variation. We came up with a standard style guide for the dashboard, to ensure consistent colors, button, typography, and other reusable elements. The style guide was developed and made available online so other resources can reference for the future.

  • 7
    Fixing the Information Architecture and Menu flows

    I facilitated card-sorting and other gamestorming exercises to determine complex menu structures. Observed how and where the administrator would categorize certain menu items. This ensured logical mapping of the menu structure.