Goals
- Brainstorm application features with the team using existing User Research
- Conceptualize a unique web application within our product platform, which would allow users to manage Notifications and Alerts
- Conceptualize a Notification Tray which could “pop over”
- Design and document applications micro-interactions
What I Did
I worked on this concept application from the mid to the third quarter of 2020. This project was an excellent opportunity to grow my Interaction Design skills. First, I gathered stakeholders from the Product Design team for a brainstorming session where we looked at existing User Research and imagined features for conceptualization. Next, we thought through possible user workflows. Afterward, I developed hi-fi wireframes and regularly checked in with my manager, Nick Mason, to iterate on the wireframes based on expectations and his intentions for showing the prototype to advocate for future work.
Eventually, we settled on a table dashboard with three tabular views. From there, I worked on more detailed Visual Designs for the manager and the Notification Tray. The Notification Tray would “pop over” page content and appear in all applications in the top header bar, similar to Social Media or corporate tools like Confluence.
The main focus of the application was ensuring notifications were actionable, priority was evident, and users could sort large numbers of messages efficiently. The manager was tailored to specific use cases in existing applications but also offered features that were not capable within our current application framework. During the process, I also re-designed patterns for the Horizon Design System, such as our Tab Bar component.
Documentation
After wrapping up this project, I added notations to the visual designs. The goal of documenting the project in Figma was to make it easy for other designers or me in the future to pick up the project and run on the ideas conceptualized previously. The hope is that we can return to this concept as the platform is developed. The direction did change, though, later in 2022 when product leadership opted to move the internal system alerting to Tableau and not invest in developing another internal application. Therefore, the status of this project remains to be determined at the moment.
Outcomes
- Provided Hi-Fi Visual Designs of the concept Notification Manager and Notification Tray
- Included documentation of user flows and micro-interaction Visual Designs
- The manager was able to use Visual Designs to advocate for future work concerning internal product alerting
