Ubiquity Press

Older Version

When starting this project, I was introduced to the version that the users were already using, which was called JURA. The features that JURA had were all clustered, and very difficult to understand. I had to re-create JURA into a new centralized administration interface called Central Station.

User Research

To gain insights into user pain points and their specific needs, I conducted interviews. Subsequently, I observed that the projects being tackled by other product designers would also be integrated into Central Station. As a result, we collaborated on Central Station together.

Interview

I had the opportunity to interview six users, including two Ubiquity Press Administrators, two press managers, and two journal managers spanning from the United States to the United Kingdom. The key insights gathered are:

• Users find Ubiquity Press products dispersed and confused with no guidance, leading users to have fear of using features in the product. Therefore the features in JURA were barely touched except the ones that they know how to use it.

• In UP products, non-technical users often struggle with back-end settings that require coding, resulting in frequent requests for developer assistance for even simple changes.

• Users encounter challenges with understanding user permissions, leading to confusion about what they can access and what restrictions apply.

Secondary Research

When searching for administration interfaces, the main takeaways are:

• They had dashboard that shows the summary of tasks, ongoing process, data, and more features that can be customized.

• Simple menu bar that consist of essential categories

• Showing user name and its role that helps users to feel more personalized once they login

• Help page that can support users when they have question

Survey

We conducted survey to figure out what kind of functionality they mostly use in JURA, and what kind of functionality that should be added more into Central Station. We then organized needs of function into spreadsheets to see which ones should be deleted, and kept.

Affinity Mapping

With surveys, interviews, and secondary research we have done affinity mapping so that we can see take out key insights of what is needed for Central Station.

Grouping Features

We then organized the specific features within each page into categories. With this, we were able to see the general understanding of necessary, and unnecessary features.

Action Grouping

We have trimmed down the extra specific features by grouping features, and calling in with our Ubiquity Press Administrators, and have grouped them by actions that users take.

User Persona/Matrix

After the interviews and surveys, we defined user personas. In order to know exactly which features are accessible to which user persona, we created a chart.

Low-Fidelity Prototype

With key insights and user flow, we created low-fidelity prototypes. At this process, we were still talking to our Ubiquity Press Admins to make sure all of the user flow was correct, and that our low-fidelity prototypes made sense in connection with the user flow.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

During our mid-fidelity prototyping process, we have created a screen from the main navigation. We have added more pages, and have worked on the details of the functionality, such as editing the design and the content of their website, showing instruction, creating journal/press, notifying the payment to users, etc.

Also, we were discussing with our team on what program we will be using for reporting, and payment methods.

High Fidelity Prototype

After discussing with our team, and constantly executing our mini usability sessions, we have made our final high-fidelity prototypes. We have changed our UI design to modernized our website. Additionally, we have added more pages, and functionality based on the needs of the users.