DecisionGrid Application
Improved data associations
Mike Dunn- Lead UX Designer
Matthew Wells- UX Designer/Developer
DecisionGrid is an analysis and decision-making platform designed for investigators, detectives and analysts. This case study illustrates how I decomposed a specific user request into functionality that addressed workflow issues and solved a larger issue than implementing the request would have.
THE PROBLEM
Shortly after implementing functionality around bulk data import into an investigative workspace via spreadsheet, multiple requests came in from customers to facilitate cross associations of data within the spreadsheet upload process. On the surface, the solution may have seemed like a logical extension of the functionality we had just delivered, but the problem wasn't that the spreadsheet upload didn't allow associations to occur, but rather that creating associations in the application wasn't flexible enough and was handled on one individual data object at a time.
BRAINSTORMING
There were a couple of considerations that came into play while planning the design of this functionality; First, the emphasis of where data was being entered into the application was shifting away from individual pieces entered in contextually towards bulk import of larger amounts of data (this is why our current associations method was falling short). An early assumption related to this fact was that it still made sense to create the associations between the different data objects contextually. Second, general user testing of the app revealed that the '+' or 'add' buttons were being interpreted both as creating a new data object, as well as 'adding' that object within the context of another object- associating a data object to the view of another data object. We also wanted to open up the object association model within the UI to allow for any type of object to be associated to any other type of object. The following flows were created to represent the different paths of association and creation in the app:
DESIGN
In order to help maintain velocity on the product team and not become a choke point for progress within our two-week sprints, We often eschewed low-fidelity wireframes and built comps around current screens in the application. In these designs we addressed the need to more easily manage multiple associations between the selected object and any other object within the investigative workspace:
Additionally, we defaulted the 'add' action within contextual views to association management, with a streamlined fallback workflow around contextual data object creation that would allow both functions to be handled in the same action sequence:
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