User ExperienceResearch andDesign

Lowell Staveland831-661-0391Lowell@staveland.comwww.stavelandhfe.com

This portfolio exemplifies how I bring my design process into projects to create effective, successful designs.

•Qualitative•Quantitative•Relationships•Experiences

Research

•Concepts•Tasks/Scenarios•Personas

Model

•Wireframes•Conceptual•Functional

Design

Test

Portfolio

Selected works from my project list

Pocket Avatars is a video messaging application for Android and iOS smart phones which uses advanced facial and voice recognition technology to capture facial expressions and talking that are superimposed on an avatar’s face and voice in real time.

I led user research during development trials to determine viability and design direction for Pocket Avatars.

Utilized qualitative and quantitative methods. Facilitated recruiting hundreds of users in the US and China.Collected, analyzed, and reported usage behavior and preference data.Prototyped essential design changes dictated by research results.

iPhone 5

Release early 2014

Too few customers self-registered using the License Registration Portal. Instead, they used Cisco support, a long, burdensome experience.

The UI lacked a clear beginning, had long, multi-page operations with hidden fields, and forced users to provide all information.

I researched users’ activities and enhanced the UI’s capabilities:

Anchor tasks to global menus.Enter data once and re-use.Collect and display searchable, tabular, selectable information.Standardize tasks with 3-step operations.

www.cisco.com/go/licensing

Customers need to map licenses to devices in the field or datacenters.

Users had to manually record device and license data, find a computer, start the license tool, and enter the information.

A mobile app using a bar code scanner could create the map on the spot.

Details could be amended later online, reducing the manual effort.

I created prototypes for iOS and Android phones that enabled users to rapidly scan devices and corresponding licenses to link and upload to Cisco servers.

Used task and user research from the license portal design to derive essential mobile tasks.

Used Google and Apple standards in conjunction with Cisco’s to create functional prototypes.

www.cisco.com/go/licensing

A dive into the agents’ world revealed essential design components:

Integrate pages to reduce time and space for search.

Use drill down task model.

Allow multiple, simultaneous actions.

The results: increased efficiency, reduced errors, and less time per call.

UI for Global Support did not meet agents’ needs for efficiency, low errors, and short call duration.

Serial, multiple-page operations increased search and response time, as well as intellectual demands to integrate information across time and space.

HP’s product line is vast; therefore it is challenging to evaluate all designs before release.

My design challenge: Create a flexible, remote, global program to conduct qualitative and quantitative research and then to create the best experiences from the research.

Server system management GUI design recommendations from testing

Enterprise Centralized Management Server (CIM) design recommendations from testing

This UI for managing agile development tasks required interacting among disparate tabs and pop-ups, creating navigation confusion and increasing time on task.

From focus groups and interviews with users I found that a tabbed-usage model would best unify multiple windows to efficiently and accurately complete management tasks.

A common issue is the lack of design standards, causing design deficiencies and design drift across versions.

I created design and interaction specifications through user research and transformed their conversations into practical, viable standards.

Mockup of ProCurve Manager Dashboard re‐designed to include network security.

Wireless coverage maps for large wireless deployments presented a very complex challenge imposed by technology and building material constraints.

Creating design and interaction specifications for integrated coverage and constraint maps necessitated a thorough understanding of how users managed constraints.

Dashboards present snapshots of essential information. The large amount of information available from large wireless deployments requires research to define effective snapshots.

As with the coverage and constraint maps, user and task research provided the design guidance to mockup dashboards from which users determine at a glance the required actions.

Dashboard Concept sketches from Research

Dashboard built from Concept sketches

For experienced network administrators, accessing a device from anywhere using a browser means effective, timely device management.

This basic page layout shows a single page device view.

The integrated displays support quick access to configuration actions and device responses.

Success lay in providing pre-set defaults for common configurations with two simple steps:

1. Pick what looks familiar as your environment.

2. Choose again if necessary.

Non-technical users had difficulty configuring wireless products and networks.

The instructions to “configure your wireless network” were inadequate and perplexing to many users.

HP’s business customers experienced difficulty completing tasks using HP's business process expertise website.

Direct access to the business customers was not possible, so I found available “surrogates” in the in-house domain experts, support personnel, and account managers.

Users needed:

More visible options.

Information more effectively grouped.

A clear view of current and possible actions.

The design conformed to HP standards and color themes.

Research from interviews and on-site visits clarified that “less is more” for all except experts.

“Less” was actualized as a small pop-up that opens as needed with minimal interaction for novice users.

The design provides access to more information for advanced users and network administrators.

Updating a network is rarely easy and can be especially difficult for novice users.

NETGEAR found that customers only infrequently downloaded and updated the necessary router and adapter firmware.

Workscape’s desktop employee management application, implemented to aid employees, instead acted as a barrier to usage. Management decided that making it web-based would remove the barriers.

I worked with employees and managers to understand the experiences to preserve and those to redesign.

With a graphic designer’s help, I delivered the UI style guide for developers.

I worked extensively with the mechanical, plastic, and molding engineers to understand the specialized design needs

Design goal: Simplicity

Provide means to check in CAD designs.

Select collaborators.

Specify required design services.

Mechanical engineers for car companies designed globally but collaborated remotely by physically sharing designs.

Collaboration sites to globally share designs and interactively design cars in near real time did not exist in 1999.

Exhaustive user research with extensive design evaluations on site revealed design flaw points.

These were design artifacts from constraints of a complex, structured business rules engine.

Once this was understood, redesigning around the constraints was possible.

Information fields needed regrouping and restructuring to follow the real-world flow.

Kaiser has extensive in-house expertise but must provide referrals to certain medical specialists.

The existing referral tool design caused unacceptable referral errors that increased time on task, training, and costs.