Motionworks
2 Designers, 1 Product Owner, 2 Co-Founders
Product Strategy, User Research,
Workshop Facilitation, UX/UI Design
February 2021 - April 2021
As a freelancer at Motionworks, I was asked to facilitate a 6-week Design Sprint to redesign CityCast, which enables city planners to analyze and visualize historical, present, and forecasted future geolocation data.
For example, let’s assume a city planner is planning for the next 20 years and needs to determining if adding a new lane to the bridge colored in dark blue on the maps in Figure 1 would reduce traffic.
Figure 1: A city planner comparing how people travel in 2001, 2021, and 2041.
The predicted data and visualization can help answer questions such as:
• Did the traffic volume decrease after adding a new lane?
• From which districts are people coming from and when?
• Who are these people in terms of income and age?
The answers to these questions facilitate city planners evaluate specific projects and scenarios through data-driven justifications.
After interviewing the PO and Data Scientists at CityCast about current user journeys, we broke down the main User Personas:
• Private Sector: Consultants
• Public Sector: Transit Agencies, Government Organizations
The Direct Users of CityCast are City Planners, but before they can make any impact, they need to propose projects and scenarios to the Decision Makers & Stakeholders, which are the Indirect Users. Their needs are:
Direct Users: Planners
• Objective project proposals
• Feel more confident when presenting
• Easy project prioritization process
Indirect Users: Decision Makers
• Understand the process behind the proposals
• Story told through data
• Transparent answers to their questions
After mapping out user journeys for different direct users (planners), the PO and I analyzed a common use-case, where city planners aim to create proposals to get funding for their projects.
We decided that Steps 2 & 3 had the most potential for redesign because of the prospect of increasing user engagement with CityCast.
After pinpointing the main problems that caused the lack of engagement, the PO and I prioritized the backlog based on User Value, Business Value, and Technical Complexity.
1. They can’t input and edit their own data
2. They can’t see relevant metrics in the forecasted results
We decided to tackle Problem 1 first based on the high user & business values and low tech complexity.
With the problem in mind, we discussed the long-term goals, decided on a Sprint Question that we wanted to answer, and ideated our How Might We Questions.
After presenting the direction of the Design Sprint to the Co-Founders (CEO & CTO), we were told about unexpected technical constraints for the users to upload and edit their own data.
We were advised by the CTO to focus on the Forecast Analysis Step in the User Journey instead and with his help, we came up with the following How Might We Questions:
• HMW integrate CityCast with the current Motionworks Analysis Module?
• HMW generalize the Forecast Analysis for a variety of users?
e.g. Mall Owners, Advertising Agencies
In summary, the Co-Founders were more interested in an integrated design of CityCast, the current Motionworks platform, and the Population Movement module than a complete redesign of CityCast. Taking the Mall Owner as a specific use-case, the user story is as follows,
Mall Owner Use-Case:
As a Mall Owner, I want to know where people are coming from, what type of transit / route they are taking & who they are, so that I can optimize my marketing strategy.
Situation
During the ideation workshop, the CTO wanted to explore a different vision
Challenge
How to make use of this meeting?
Action
I suggested that we interview users before making an absolute decision, while using the meeting to discuss visions and use-cases
Result
We explored and documented the long-term vision and gathered enough insights to create a low-fidelity prototype of the vision
Situation
Stakeholders were not aligned, therefore the product vision and problem that we wanted to solve was unclear
Challenge
How might we proceed with the project?
Action
I suggested that we drop the design sprint and explore the vision more instead. Then I created and presented a low-fidelity prototype of what the vision could look like to get feedback from the Co-founders and PO.
Result
We came up with more questions regarding the vision, e.g. What kind of metrics and sub-metrics do the users want to know? Who are the users' target audiences?
Then we concluded that a further discussion between leadership is needed to decide what we want to achieve in the short-term.
• Design an integration of CityCast into Motionworks's Insights Platform
• Add the top features from the backlog that make forecast analysis easier and more useful for city planners
In the end Motionworks decided to pause the redesign and integration of CityCast into the main platform and instead focus on place-based location intelligence (e.g. Mall Owner Use-Case).
The main takeaway for me was that Design Sprints don't always work and that to lead a project I need to involve ALL stakeholders as early as possible. Most importantly I experienced the twists and turns of the design process and learned to react quickly with the ability to pivot and adapt.
