SELECTRON
Field Portal
THE GOAL
Design and develop a mobile app for government field inspectors that streamlines route scheduling, enhances productivity, and improves data accuracy. This app needed to cater to the unique needs of field inspectors while ensuring ease of use, data security, and scalability.
Government agencies often employ field inspectors responsible for various tasks, such as safety inspections, environmental assessments, and infrastructure maintenance. Efficient route scheduling is crucial for optimizing their productivity and ensuring timely inspections across a wide geographic area. Traditional manual scheduling processes are time-consuming, error-prone, and lack real-time adaptability.
My Role: Product Design, Front-End Development
Tools: Adobe CC, Sketch, VXML, Bootstrap, SCSS, HTML
I need to ensure optimal routes and schedules that are flexible to unpredictable events.
I need real-time updates to my schedule and routes.
EMPATHIZE
To understand the needs and pain points of government field inspectors, I collaborated with multiple departments, conducted interviews and experienced ride-alongs to better understand the needs of our customers. Traditionally, scheduling and tracking has been a painful experience for many customers so we spent a lot of time studying flow charts and finding ways to improve both the experience by conducting user interviews, surveys, and observations.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Inspectors often struggled with inefficient paper-based scheduling systems.
Lack of real-time updates led to missed appointments and delays.
Field inspectors needed a user-friendly mobile app to manage their routes and access inspection details.
Data security and privacy were paramount concerns for government agencies.
User Stories: We documented user stories to understand the specific needs of each persona and guide the app's development.
PROTOTYPE + TEST
My role expanded into both UX and front-end development on the project and also facilitated the creation of mobile app demos on Android to help sales in the field. I established a UI library and customized the Bootstrap framework to have a consistent, responsive, branded UI across our applications. We also leveraged Kendo for data visualization and created customized widget components.
Design and Prototyping: Using the insights gathered, we created wireframes and prototypes to visualize the app's interface and user flow. The design emphasized simplicity and user-friendliness while ensuring it could handle complex scheduling scenarios.
Development and Iteration: The development process involved creating a backend system for route optimization and real-time updates.
Key features included:
Route planning and optimization.
Real-time updates and notifications.
OUTCOMES
The new IVR framework coupled with the route visualization allowed for faster implementation, self-management, decreased load on customer support and tighter turn-around times with inspections.
“I can’t believe it - you’ve made scheduling fun!”
The Field portal resulted in significant increase in new business and renewals. Additionally, sales and marketing reported an uptick in conversions due to the improved UI and offerings. It not only solved customer needs but gave them a delightful experience.
