User Avatars | Danny OW Portfolio

User Profiles

Making users easier to identify

Part 1: The Challenge

Background

In an auto shop it is typical for one laptop/tablet to serve as the primary device for 3-4 technicians/admins. Employees tend to stay logged-in and different employees might complete their work under the first employee's log-in.

Owners desired accurate tracking on which employee completed what work to avoid bad quotes, inaccurate work tracking, or a feeling of unprofessionalism.

Problem

Multiple users were sharing log-ins and shops were having difficulty tracking their employees' work. The following confusion led to customer disputes over what estimates to trust — disputes often cause retention to drop or costly sacrifices on services.

Scope

Platforms: This experiment was conducted as a web first project with potential to transfer to tablet and phone as well.

Defining Success: Shops utilize all of their user profiles & purchase more licenses when hiring additional employees.

Sample Size: This project was conducted as a research project where I relied on 6 shop owners and service writers to identify pain points within the app.

Timeline: 2 months

Roles

User research
Interaction design
Experience design
Visual design

Part 2: The Process

Step 1: Hypothesize

I hypothesized that user avatars in multiple locations could alert users which account they’re logged into and if they need to switch profiles.

My director and I proposed adding profile image customizations to the settings, navigation, time clocks, and work orders so that each instance would alert a user if they’re logged in to the correct account.

Step 2: Testing

What I did

I was directed by senior leadership to conduct a poll with car enthusiasts, and add customizable options for each vehicle and character.

I provided documentation and examples of how avatars would behave in hover states, drop downs, while selected, and when overlapping each other.

I was then cleared to test my hypothesis by creating a mid-high fidelity prototype of these avatars interacting with the current interface.

Part 3: Conclusions

Key Insights

When we wrapped this project I concluded that:

The focus on avatars was misaligned away from needs of customers and was an unnecessary edit to the software.

Adding colors to the user’s monograms was sufficient to differentiate between staff members, especially for standard shops with 1-12 employees.

Final Thoughts

In this process we skipped a few parts of the design process, including early ideation, low fidelity models, and we did research on the wrong topics.

I believe we could have saved a good amount of time by testing low fidelity mockups. Disproving our inaccurate hypothesis earlier would have helped revealed our key insights.

Additional additions I believe would benefit this experience would be:

Logout timers at 15-30 minute intervals where before logging them out users are alerted they have been inactive for too long.

A technician exclusive experience where users can swap between non-admin accounts.

Messages asking users to confirm "Yes, keep me logged-in" after that user has been inactive for more than X amount of time. This would not sign them out of any time clock just log out of their account so they or others are forced to log-in.