Check and Connect: Trainer Tracker

A web app built for effeciency

Check and Connect Trainer Tracker is a web application that was designed to help national trainers located out of the University of Minnesota, create support and manage their local trainers who are spread across 9 different states nation wide.

While the site provided the national trainers with some workflow functionality, the users were finding it hard to navigate.

Additionally a large pain point for users is the fact that local trainers didn’t have access to the app, and therefore a large communication gap had developed.

It is my goal to increase functionality of the navigation by providing better visibility, consistency, and mapping, as well as open up the communication gap so users can do their jobs more efficiently.

The Problem

1. The Check and Connect web app was difficult to navigate for the primary users (national trainers).

2. NT’s were having to enter an over abundance of information for the local trainers, and with the organization set to expand nation wide, the issue would only increase.

The Proposal

1. Gain insight into what pain points were troubling users.

2. Better understand the tool in context, and learn it’s capabilities.

3. Further uncover the national trainers process in regards to local trainers information and the Check and Connect app.

The Solution

1. Re-design the app’s layout, including improvements to language, content location, hierarchy, and ease of access.

2. Begin the local trainer access integration, allowing them to enter some of their own data on the app, thus relieving pressure from the NT’s, which in turn allows them to focus more on team management.

Research

We had a team of 8 researchers who were able to evaluate the needs and values of the national trainers using the site which was important to the client as they are looking to the future in the hopes to expand their outreach to all 50 states.

Research of the site was conducted both individually and as a group. We also went onsite to conduct contextual inquiries to see just how the national trainers used this site in their daily workflow.

Once research was completed we were given 3 days to come up with a redesign of a wireframe prototype that could address some of the issues we were presented.

Secondary Research

In order to assess the site, our group of 8 was given a video walkthrough the site through the Admin’s eyes while creating a mock national trainer. Since the site was already active and contained confidential material we were not given control to make a new user of our own. This included a task led step by step process led by our client that focused on the core elements of what the site had to offer the national trainers.

Contextual Inquiry

It was time to head to our client. Our team of 8 split into 2 groups and each watched half the users interact with the Trainer Tracker app. To our surprise we found out that for some of them the app was still very new, and in once case a user hand’t even used it yet.

For folks who had used it already, it seemed that they either didn’t know the full capability of the site, or were too frustrated with it to use it on a daily basis. Once user even let us know that they use it 1-2 times a month and that was it.

Ideate

The team then came back and analyzed what we had observed. We broke up the categories based on our user goals and gridded them per user. The goals were as follows:

• Gain a deeper understanding of the national trainer role and their values/priorities

• Gain an understanding around institutional frameworks and processes that impact user workflow or tool usage

• Better understand how the tool fits into the national trainer task workflow and if there are any dependencies or constraints associated with this tool, such as before or after using it.

• Learn more about common usage patterns and pain points, including if there are any workarounds users implement to bypass pain points

• Better understand the degree to which the interface language matches user expectations

• Better understand the hierarchy of the data in the tool and how data is used outside the tool

Prototype

My design incorporates an overhaul on the main interface, including a drop down navigation bar, table searching and easy page access, as well as making the export option a call to action.

The biggest feature I added was adding the local trainers to the app. By giving them a portal in which they can access all their requirements, documents, as well as the ability to chat with national trainers the app is not multi-funcitonal and will hopefully cut down on outside tools, and internal confusion.