State of Missouri
A Re-design Solution Proposal for DES Uinteract System
Timeframe - 1 year
Overview
Uinteract is the State of Missouri's Division of Employment Security system that users navigate to access and upload vital information referencing their unemployment claims. Over the course of a year of interviewing users, I found that Uinteract was difficult to comprehend, and due to information overload was difficult to navigate for users.
Specific Pain Points
These were pain points that were noted coming from the majority of users.
Difficult to Follow
"Where is it on the website?"
Lack of instructions
"What does this even mean?"
Usability/Accessibility
"I don't know how to get to that page, I am going to have my wife help me and call you guys back."
Affinity Mapping
Organizing data collected over the past year by casually interviewing users and obtaining user feedback. This included demographics of claimants and pain points.
Uinteract Users
User Demographics included:
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Unemployed, Low income
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Laid-off working class
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Young working class
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Single parents
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Families over the size of 4
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Non-tech savvy individuals
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Older individuals with third party users
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Non-English speaking users
The Users
10 months of getting to know
the users and their concerns
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Personas
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Motivations of users
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Empathy Mapping
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Needs of users
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Collectively I also noted that there was a huge lack of trust between The State of Missouri and users. Roughly 40 out of the 45 calls I would receive a day, users would express that they felt this large entity did not have their best interest in mind. They felt that the system was built against them for them to fail. That no one cared about their situation. A lot of these feelings originated from the Uinteract system not properly establishing this trust through clear content, accessible information, and simple processes.
Empathy Mapping
The User Feels
Feels like no one cares if they assistance or not.
The User Says
"This is too confusing of a
process just to get a little money."
The User Hears
Different information from what is shown on the website.
The User Thinks
"There is always information that comes out of nowhere. Why didn't anyone tell me this?"
User Stories
New User
"As a new user, I want to become familiar with where to go first so that I can file an unemployment claim with ease."
Returning User
"As a returning user, I want to quickly follow up on notices sent to me, so that I can get paid on time."
Problem
I felt the biggest problem that caused the majority of the issues for users was that the site lacked guidance to better comprehend it. There was also a lot of space that could be used for help guides and instructional content, replacing redundant information tabs that were already being presented in the tabs at the top of the screen. There was also an abundance of hidden features within the information tabs at the top of the screen.
I had a very short deadline to present this re-design solution, so I decided to focus on a solution for the biggest issue that users encountered. Which was the lack of instruction available to navigate the system.
Sketch Iterations
When I started making notes I wanted to keep in mind three important elements:
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A visible website tour.
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Simple low worded content that would alleviate information overload.
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Immediate help guide after logging in that would stay stationary during the entire login session.
In this sketch, I found the relevance of utilizing a spotlight effect to bring attention to a help guide.
Here is an iteration where I decided to add in the use of pagination bullets
so that users know how much time is left on the tour. This would help with adding more transparency and in the long run more trust. I also found that users were impatient with the lengthy filing process so this feature could possibly assist in alleviating this.
The spotlight feature.
Design Inspiration
User-friendly tour pop-up.
The stationary help feature.
Prototype Solution
Simplify
Focusing on the important features.
Explain
Walk users through the steps.
Color
Within WCAG guidelines
Accessibility Components
Next Steps
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Additional User Research
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User testing
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High fidelity prototype
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Additional ideation