A report of my very formative 6-months stage.
I was part of a team where my role was to almost completely re-think the website of an observatory that collects and provides citizens with a series of surveys, statistical data, and graphs related to Italian commerce.
The end users were students and organizations, but stakeholders wanted it to be accessible to anyone, emphasizing that even those without technical expertise should be able to use institutional websites like this one.
We did a team-led heuristic evaluation and I learned that not every heuristic makes sense to be evaluated in every context.
Keeping users as my pole star, I started by defining a new information architecture. This was a key point since the structure of the website was a complete mess.
There wasn't even an adequate way to search for info inside the website, so I had to make things easily findable (first image).
After receiving approval I obviously worked on wireframes and mockups (tools: Invision, Sketch). But I want you to focus on what was the biggest challenge here and how I managed to solve it.
Stakeholders wanted them to be transformed into equally detailed interactive charts, and at the same time, I had to make them understandable to everyone and immediate in conveying information.
How did I get there? I followed Tufte's guidelines; I designed both for information consumers and analysts; as a psychologist, I considered visual perception challenges; and I used to my advantage pre-attentive visual properties. Read this short article if you want to explore it further.
Specifically, I had the chance to participate in the validation phase of a new web app (Impresa.Italia.it) whose purpose is to significantly simplify the bureaucratic relationship between entrepreneurs and public administration.
Users were entrepreneurs already familiar with InfoCamere's services. I found it crucial first to identify the right questions to ask and the right tasks to submit; I did not have to look for confirmation but to find problems that I might not have identified; then it was important to make the participants feel comfortable and not judged, and to encourage them to think aloud.
However, I paid close attention to nonverbal language and actions on the prototype without making interpretations. My experience in clinical psychology was very helpful; if you want to know more about it, I mentioned it in this article.
I designed a set of icons in outlined and filled version, intended to be part of a design system that with its components and guidelines will be the common starting point for all the company's digital products.
This experience allowed me to hone my strictly graphic skills and taught me the importance of using affordances and simple symbology that are as universally recognizable as possible.
I've re-designed a municipality website: analyzed it, defined a new site map, identified proto-personas, user flows and user journeys, solved the problems found, created a working prototype and translated the designs into HTML and CSS files.
I've designed interactions for a website intended for payments to the public administration.