aggie
PROJECT SUMMARY
- Project Type: Team Project
- Role: UX Researcher & Designer
- Skills used: Research, Wireframing, Logic&Task flows, Visual Design, Testing&Evaluation.
- Tools: Sketching, Balsamiq, Google Drive, Photoshop, Illustrator, Screen Logger, Sony a5000 Camera, Contextual Inquiry, Interviews, Grounded Theory.
- Process: Literature review, Data Analysis, Sketching, Persona Creation, Data gathering, Interaction flow, Wireframing, Visual mockups, Testing&Evaluation.
- Publication: Social Media Fostering Social Good: A Case for Election Monitoring in Nigeria. Accepted to ICTD 2015.
About
Aggie is a web-based social media aggregator that facilitates the process of election monitoring in African country. Interestingly, Aggie can be used to monitor any cause in any society. Aggie's workflow revolves around aggregating reports pulled from social media and escalating pertinent incidents through an incident management system. So far, Aggie has been deployed in over 5 countries.
why
Aggie was created out of a need to develop technological platforms, human and social processes, and the underlying creative abilities to leverage social media and digital networks to enhance democracies in Africa. Today in Africa, there are three important trends taking place - deep proliferation of internet connectivity, increasing social media subscriptions and a growing youth movement with a strong will for change. These conditions present a good opportunity for systems like Aggie.
objective
After monitoring some elections in 2011, Aggie had surprised us with its performance. However, there was room for improvement in the areas of incident management, user roles and trends analysis. The main goal of Aggie2.0 (a new instance of Aggie) was to design a solution that encapsulates all these areas of improvements.
Design, testing & evaluation for Aggie1.0
Results for Aggie1.0
Over 235 users volunteered to use Aggie1.0. Interviews, Contextual Inquiry and focused groups were used to collect data during the field study. We found out that Aggie1.0 did a good job at:
- Meeting the electorates where they are.
- Technology neutrality.
- Producing actionable leads through incident reporting.
However, we also found areas for improvement:
- Validating Veracity
- Controlling irrelevant reports
- Incident Management
- User Roles
- Trends Analysis
THE RE-DESIGN - aggie2.0
To improve on the weak areas of Aggie1.0, all the pertinent points pulled from the evaluation data were made into actionable design criteria. I created Work flow models, Personas, user roles, design mocks and wireframes.
In June, 2014, I and the team were on the field to conduct another phase of testing and evaluation for Aggie2.0. Based on the feedback we got, I have redesigned the 3rd instance of Aggie, and would be conducting final testing/evaluation during the presidential elections in Nigeria on 28th March 2015.
Ideating
After going through Aggie1.0 evaluation data, I started conceptualizing different solutions like, user roles and incident management. To achieve these, I came up with very quick and rough design action points, Personas and Task flows.
Wireframing - phase 1
The team had several brainstorm and review sessions to agree upon created concepts and the best way going forward. Next, I had to come up with mockups and initial wireframes for Aggie2.0
wireframing - phase 2
Visual Comps & Design iterations
The wireframes inspired three different level iterations (Step 1 - 3) before an instance was developed. In June 2014, evaluation & testing were conducted on the field during an election in Nigeria. Again, important feedback was gotten during this process, leading to a final design and Implementation (Step 4). Testing and evaluation is scheduled for 28th March 2015.