Critique Planner Tool
Frontend Dev
React
Design
Opportunity
Critiques are a weekly ritual for the various UX teams at AusPost. Whilst they are held consistently, little or no planning would go into each session. This sometimes resulted in designers lacking clarity about the best focus for feedback or feedback being insufficiently fine grained.
This was discussed in one of our regular retrospectives, hence my decision to develop a tool to resolve this issue.
Goal: To create a tool the UX team at Australia Post could use to assist in organising and structuring critiques, ensuring that those who required feedback more urgently could receive it.
Process
To gain an understanding of whether such a tool would help solve the problem, I aimed to have a prototype version of this tool prepared for the following critique. Based on experience and observation from previous critiques, I developed a list of basic requirements which would allow me to understand the desirability and utility of the solution. These requirements were:
Ability to add an agenda item with the following information
Name
Stage of the work
What type of feedback is required?
What specific feedback is required?
Urgency of feedback
An agenda, sorted by the urgency of feedback
Agenda items cleared at the end of the week, ready for the following week
Many additional requirements were added over time as the tool was more widely used; however, I deemed these to be the most important to validate the solution.
The initial prototype was created using jQuery and a very basic Node.js REST API. I chose these as I believed they would allow me to build a functional platform in a short period of time. I planned to rebuild the app using React if the prototype was successful.
First testing & app rebuild
The feedback from the initial use of the tool in a critique was positive and provided a number of improvements, both major and minor, which could render it far more useable.
Prior to rebuilding the app, I uplifted the design using the AusPost design system and implemented many of the suggestions arising from the prototype use.
With the initial prototype and designs, I was able to rebuild the app using React, allowing the addition of new capabilities and functionality.
Continuing iteration
We continued to use the tool in critiques which allowed me to identify further improvements and opportunities that were added on a regular basis. A feedback form was implemented, allowing designers to provide future suggestions or report bugs. This was a very useful way of structuring and prioritising additions to the tool.
Since the initial prototype, some notable feature additions include:
Ability to edit and delete agenda items
Ability to add and edit different teams with separate agendas
Time allocation functionality
A distinction between the problem to solve, and the feedback required
An expanded and collapsed version of the agenda
Demo
This demo is a duplicate of the original website (as of 23/7/20) which uses static data served from JSON files. As a result of this, when a new agenda item is created in the demo, it will not be reflected in the agenda.