Account administration

role

Research, Design, Development

Project Background

Administrative users for a website are in charge of creating external users, setting up permissions, and other general account setup in order to navigate the site. The administrative users were often citing the difficulty of setting up users as a reason why they weren't getting their accounts on the website.

goal

Create an easy to use administrative tool that allowed administrators to add many users and permissions at once.

Research

I gathered data on administrators to figure out who is setting up the most users and who is setting up the least. I used these numbers to talk to administrative users by observing how they currently set up users and interviewing them about this process.

Key insights from the user observations and interviews:

• The current process works great when there is one user but is repetitive and cumbersome when you need to add many users.

• Administrative users were often unsure if they were adding the right roles and permissions, citing a spreadsheet that was made for them.

• Users were unable to complete searches for existing users to see if they already exist due to a bug in the system.

• Administrative users were unable to see if the users they were creating had signed up and logged into the system.

• Much of the tool was unimportant to the users, and users were skipping a lot of the optional information inputs.

Design

I built two different, clickable workflows with our Business Analyst using a common scenario discovered in user observations. We asked our administrative users to make sure existing users for an account were signed up and then add 7 new users to that account with the same permissions all at once. I hoped to contrast a stepped form that was similar to what the users had today with the added feature of multiple users, and a more complex form that had new features such as filtering users and bulk editing users.

Key insights from the usability tests:

• Administrative users were able to find their users who have not logged in or signed up for the website very quickly in Option A

• Users were able to complete the tasks more quickly in Option B as it was similar to what they have today

• Users appreciated the 'Copy' feature and said they were more likely to use that instead of Bulk Edit

• The permissions were much easier to add when there was a description the permission being added

• Users appreciated being able to customize who the sign up invitation was sent from

Using the findings from the usability tests, I decided to combine the elements that tested well in both designs into one unified design. I worked with the business analyst and lead developer to turn the designs into smaller, iterative steps that would deliver value to the user quickly.

DEVELOPMENT

The project has been paused as of July 2018 due to priorities shifting, but when it is back on as top priority, I will be coding the HTML/SCSS for this page.