Chedar is a production management platform for desktops and laptops tailored for film companies. Chedar's cloud-based system allows teams to collaborate online. Its intuitive interface helps them create more competent quotes and film budgets helping users easily create spreadsheets for budgeting, tracking, suppliers, and invoices.
Many clients find the spreadsheets difficult to edit. My challenge was finding design solutions to create a better user experience within the spreadsheets to streamline the budgeting process.
I was part of a three-person UX/UI design team responsible for gathering data, competitive research, user interviews, wire-framing, prototyping, and rapid usability test.
Given forty hours total within a span of four weeks to complete, I adopted the design sprint process to find solutions quickly through design, prototyping, and rapid testing.
Before starting our project, we had an initial stakeholder meeting to get us onboarded to the platform and better understand our client's goals.
Our stakeholders revealed that their current users find the spreadsheet hard to edit and navigate. They aim to create a better user experience within their spreadsheets.
After reviewing the data by Chedar, I developed questions to challenge what we may face based on their goal.
Our stakeholders wanted us to focus on the spreadsheet. However, to look at the bigger picture I created simplified user diagram in order to see a broader view of the user's journey.
I interviewed current users to gather qualitative data to determine their goals and pain points. Participants mentioned their goal while using the platform was to budget their projects, which all vary in size depending on the scale. Even though their projects were different, their pain points were the same. They revealed that the intuitive interface helps them create more competent quotes and film budgets. However, with over 900 cost lines, the spreadsheet is overwhelming to find which item they input their information.
"I only fill out five cost lines within my budget, but I have to scroll through hundreds of cost lines to find the few I filled"...actual quote from a current client.
Participants revealed that while budgeting their project, they had to scroll through many rows of unused cost lines on the spreadsheet to view which items they had inputted. They also revealed that they could not quickly compare their project notes while on the spreadsheets, which would help them see if any items were missing or left out.
I gathered all the notes from the insights I learned from our interviews and broke them down into data by common grouping themes between each participant.
With the affinity map complete, I devised "How might we" questions to find solutions to help users complete their film budgeting goals.
Based on our stakeholder's goals and users' goals, I decided to focus the solutions on the "add production notes" and "view spreadsheets" sections of the platform. I decided to pinpoint these steps based on my insights. I learned that many people found the spreadsheet grid convoluted and confusing. Users also want to view their production notes quickly and compare them to the spreadsheets.
I started the day with an exercise called lightning demos by searching the internet to help me explore solutions from all different industries and not limit myself to fintech.
I then reviewed the screenshots from the lightning demo and created a sketching method called the crazy eights to ideate various solutions.
I decided to combine the different colors and production notes slide-out menu options. Based on the data gathered, I decided to combine the two because users want to have the ability to view and edit cost lines as needed but also want to compare their production notes on the spreadsheet instead of having to go back and forth to the previous page.
With the decisions, I moved on to create a list of minimum viable product MVPs to help create a storyboard for my solutions and features.
Afterward, I moved on to create a storyboard visualizing and creating low fidelity wireframes of the screens of the user's journey to help me plan out the critical decisions for my wire-framing and prototype.
I used the storyboard I created as a guideline to create wire-frames of the MVP's using Figma.
After completing the wireframes, I created a prototype using Figma. The prototype includes my three solutions: different color cost lines, minus icon, and slide-out production notes menu.
I then conducted a rapid usability test to gain insights quickly with participants who work in the film production industry. I asked participants to perform a series of tasks to validate and evaluate the effectiveness of the solutions.
Participants found the differences in color between the cost lines in the spreadsheets helpful which allowed them to quickly determine which lines were filled.
"The different cost line colors is very helpful in finding my place"...actual quote from participant.
They loved that they could delete unwanted cost lines now and view their production notes on the spreadsheets.
"The production slide out is amazing. I can now compare my notes without having to leave my spreadsheets."...actual quote from participant
However, they also mentioned that they wished the color on the notes differed in determining which section they were editing.
Implement and test the provided solutions with more users and gain their feedback. Regroup and view the collected data and redesign for further improvement.
