Design Challenge with Govtech
This is a UX design case study report on Singapore Food Agency (SFA). For a detailed view of the research and design I’ve done, please visit the miro board. Timeline: 2 days | Tools: Miro
Introduction
This design challenge was done over the course of 2 days. In these 2 days, I made use of Design thinking and Design sprint methodologies to ideate solutions and quickly iterate prototypes to test our new ideas.
Background Information
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) was formed to oversee food safety and food security from farm-to-fork. As the lead agency for food-related matters, SFA’s mission is to ensure and secure a supply of safe food for Singapore.
Design Challenge
To set up a food business, owners have to navigate a complex licensing landscape with many touch points across multiple government agencies. New business owners find the licensing landscape very confusing and usually resort to calling specific agencies to understand the licensing regulations and items to prepare.
Responsibilities/Task
Design a better way for food business owners to apply for the required licenses. Conduct research, design and produce wireframes where applicants can submit the information digitally.
Empathize and Define
The journey can only begin when I get to understand who the users are and understand their challenges and needs. This is afterall, the heart of human-centric design. With the given checklist, I immerse myself into the position of an applicant.
I proceed on in identifying the users, and defining the problem statement and the user goals.
Users: Existing food business owners or new food business owners
Problem Statement(s): Owners have to navigate a complex licensing landscape with many touch points across multiple government agencies. New business owners find the licensing landscape very confusing and usually resort to calling specific agencies to understand the licensing regulations and items to prepare.
User Goals: Design a better way for food business owners to apply for the required licenses, digitally and successfully
Ideate - How-might-we
My aim is to produce relevant solutions to solve the problem thoroughly and with a certain degree of novelty. With the user needs in mind, I asked myself, how-might-we explore possible solutions relating to the user goal. I brainstormed a wide range of ideas to offer myself options of exploring for the later stage.
My favorite idea is: “Separate individual sections to introduce a comfortable pace of information absorption”. I am a slow reader, and I appreciate when information is displayed tastefully and thus, the reason why this idea is my favorite!
User Flow
After brainstorming on the ideas, I quickly mapped out a user flow - from the entry point till the outcome that I would want the user to achieve. In this case, Registration/Login page is the entry point and successful registration is the outcome
I also understand that users don’t magically appear at the registration/login page as their first entry point. So after much digging, I understand that users came from a landing page with lists of food licenses available for users to apply for.
Note taking and Sketching
As a designer, sometimes we can’t help but to think of the end-product before planning on it. That can be a dangerous habit and can lead to facing potential issues when
prototyping. Therefore, it’s important to note-take the thoughts or ideas before sketching. The uglier the better they say.
Sometimes, it also helps me to tap into the craziest idea during note taking. Example above, I was thinking about phishing scams happening lately, and then it led me to think about 2FA encryption and how easy it is to use it with just two simple steps. And so, the idea of ‘the 3-step procedure!’ was born.
Moving on, referencing to the HMW ideas and the user flow I created, I started to note what idea works best and on which page it best serves its purposes.
Based on the notes, I quickly draft out a sketch of the individual pages to catch a glimpse of what my ideas will look like.
Crazy-8s and Deciding
Here, I challenge myself to draw 8 variations of the same idea within 8 minutes.
I find this section quite challenging as I had to do it in silence and that I can only hear my thoughts. I also had to push my boundaries to innovate 8 different ideas within a short 1 minute time frame. Unfortunately I was unable to complete some of them.
This is possibly my favorite research activity! A true definition of ‘better done than perfect’ so that I can search for possible improvements.
I then voted on the sketches that I deemed having the potential to explore. With reference to the user flow, I lay down the voted sketches on the respective pages to have a clearer understanding of what it could possibly look like.
User Test Flow
Moving on with the user test flow, I lay down the potential flow of users navigating through the portal to reach his/her final goal. I decided to vote on the first user test flow but with a mixture of the second on the list as I find that there is potential in both.
Storyboarding
I then moved on to my second favorite bit, storyboarding! In reference to the user test flow, I drew out the from the initial stage of the flow till the end. I often ask other designers if they like to do it and generally the answer is no. I personally love it as it
gives a glimpse of the emotions of what the users are going through and also has an empathy towards the users.
Prototype
We’re getting to the last bits! Before I got to prototyping, I did a recap and ran through all of the research done above - especially on the note-taking, deciding and storyboarding. This ensures that my ideas I had for the prototype are carefully collated and synced.
I then started on the prototype, applying the features and ideas I had in my HMW research. I think I did a good job thus far but this is just based on my assumption! And to eliminate those assumptions, we get to the next part of User Testing.
User Testing
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I only had one interview to go through the test via a zoom meeting. Before interviewing, I made sure to list down all of the potential questions I might ask during the interview.
Example of interview questions:
- Introduction: This is an interview of how you, as a user, register to obtain a certain service. Before I start on the interview, I would like you to know that there are no right or wrong answers and the purpose of this interview is to understand how we can improve on our part.
- Your name and profession
- Do you have any experience with other portal, website or services where you were required to register and provide multiple documents? - What was it?
- What was the experience like? Explain more?
- Was there any pain point you faced?
After having an understanding of the interviewee’s experience using another or similar portal, I went on with part 2 of the interview.
Firstly, I gave an introduction of the prototype and its purpose. I then listed down the task, observed and also guided (if need be) the interviewee to reach his goal.
Task example: You are a new food business owner and you are tasked to successfully register for a Pre-licensing Health Requirements license by uploading the required documents in the portal.
User Test Findings
The test went generally well with some unique pointers that I highlighted to improve on the next iteration. One main takeaway was when the interview ignored two of the most important content when proceeding with the task. My assumption was that the “danger content” was not being highlighted enough.
To view the detailed user test findings, please visit the miro board. What worked?
- Understanding the importance of reading the introduction page - Uploading of required documents
- An understanding that they can save and return back to the portal Challenges
- Failed at reading the important content
- The purpose of the ‘?’ icon
- No indicated of document specs on each ‘upload document’ section
Iteration/Final Prototype
With the feedback given during the user testing, I re-work on the prototype and execute another goal-achieved version. I am not able to validate these iterations with another round of user testing and I am hoping I can do it with you!
My final takeaway
Given the tight schedule of this design challenge, I managed to target and resolve some of the issues faced by users that we sought out to answer. There is still much to be improved with the prototype solutions but everything is work in progress and there are always learning outcomes that I can take away even if it is not 100% successful.
This marks the end of my design challenge. To view my work closely, please visit the miro board. Appreciate your time reading and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I worked on them!
