FOSSA

We took a human-centered approach to problem solving to develop solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.

After identifying FOSSA customers as participants for our user study, a research plan was created. The research plan included the goals and objectives, research methods, interview schedule, participants, and research questions.

Our main goal is to understand our wide variety of customers and their needs. The secondary goal of this study was to validate our user personas, basically confirm that we are or aren’t meeting our customers’ needs, and to really see if our customers understand using the FOSSA platform.

After participants were identified and interviews were scheduled, the interviews were conducted and recorded. Since we had just entered the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, all interviews were remote. Other team members from FOSSA were invited and attended to the interview sessions, as this provides valuable insights to the owners and developers of the product. The interviewees were notified of the FOSSA team attendees; however, they were instructed to not turn their cameras on, nor ask any questions. It was strictly to listen and observe. This ensures that the tie is utilized effectively since there was a lot of information to cover. Cameras off were to help the participant feel more at ease.

We collected a lot of data from our interviews! After the interviews were conducted, we synthesized the data, identified and measured areas for improvement, and made recommendations for areas where further investigation is needed.

The findings from the user interviews, along with recommendations for platform improvements were organized into a research report and presented to the executive and product teams.

We learned a lot. There were 5 major things we discovered, and prioritized based on the Impact Effort Matrix:

• Create a dashboard
• Update Role-Based Access Control
• Provide better customer support documentation
• Update information architecture and create a design system
• Design a visual traceability diagram

In addition to the research report, we created our four initial customer personas. The customer personas serve as a guiding tool to drive user-centered conversations, as the team designs and builds features and makes incremental improvements to the FOSSA platform.

The research insights and personas were used to inform and guide design decisions, essentially translating user needs, behaviors, and pain points into actionable design elements that address the issues and create a better user experience.

The first priority tackled was updating the FOSSA platform's informatio architecture. From the user interviews, FOSSA customers This effort was a feature update based on findings from the user interviews.

During the observational study portions, we had our customers log into the FOSSA app and complete small tasks, and we noticed that many customers have confusion with navigating the FOSSA product. This varied from unknowns with the high-level navigation links and hierarchy of items, to inconsistencies with the interactivity and behavior of components. We heard from half of the participants that the UI was basically getting in the way of completing a task.

This required a reorganization of the platform's menus, and an update to user flows.

All participants interviewed have confusion in navigating the FOSSA platform, which varied with high-level navigation bar and hierarchy of items, all the way down to inconsistencies with the interactivity of components. The solution is a rebuild of the navigation system – including overall information architecture, layout, and interaction – to be completely intuitive. Goals of this effort werer to clean the display, by providing a dashboard, updated user flows, and reducing overall noise by standardizing the look and feel across all screen sizes.

One major user flow in the FOSSA platform is the Issues Corrections Workflow. Users are alerted to compliance issues in their Open Source libraries. Users click through to investigate each issue and take action. The existing workflow was time consuming and confusing.

I first had several discussions with the engineering team to understand the paths a user can take when resolving an issue. We mapped out the user workflows in several diagrams. Once I had an understanding of the paths a user can take with an issue, I was then able to redesign better, more efficient workflows.

We onboarded new members to our design team! To get new designers ramped up quickly, an onboarding deck was created. The deck included an overview on the comapnay and product, design philosophies, tools and methods, and processes.