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Project
Project Title
Ensightful: Redesigning Milestones
Position Title
Program
Project Overview
To address how instructors can create tasks that are consistent to their course structure, my supervisor and I redesigned milestones on Ensightful’s platform to allow for customization.
Research
Ensightful has two types of tasks: 1) tasks and 2) milestones. The functionality and content displayed in both tasks and milestones are identical, except milestones allow students to submit their work for a grade. In a pilot discussion with two instructors, we found that milestones do not reflect how instructors expect it to work as it lacks the interdependence of tasks.
Current project structure: Both tasks and milestones provide the same function.
Through additional feedback and pilot discussions with instructors, we also found that the content in the tasks and milestones does not cover everything that instructors need. This led me to ask, how might we make tasks and milestones feel personalized for instructors so that they can break down their projects in a meaningful way?
Current version of milestone: Instructors can fill in workload, due date, and details of a task.
As Asana is one of the most used tools at work, it was the first place I turned to in order to get a better understanding of how task information is structured as well as how features help users create a tailored project.
Ideation
Milestones are the deliverables submitted throughout a project and they indicate a significant step in completing the project. To help students move their project forward, instructors can break down milestones into different tasks. My team and I revised the project structure to reflect this.
Updated project structure: Students complete subtasks and tasks in order to create the deliverable (milestone).
Taking this revised framework, I created wireframes to explore how tasks can be linked to a milestone. Linking tasks allows students to see the steps needed to create and complete the deliverable. In addition, I explored customization to allow instructors to tailor their task/milestone content to reflect their needs.
Challenge:
Throughout this exploration stage, I struggled to communicate with the development team to ask clarification questions, which led to redesigning parts of the milestone after creating a high fidelity wireframe. Through this, I learned that I should involve the development team in each stage of the design process by discussing the ideas and designs, even if it is unfinished. This allows them to provide their expertise and bring up any concerns or issues about the design. It also brings efficiency to the design process as I can uncover any technical difficulties ahead of time and implement changes early on.
Prototyping
Customization:
Upon landing on the task manager, instructors can choose to create or personalize their tasks/milestones. Clicking edit brings the instructor to the settings page, where they can add, edit, remove, or hide/show task fields. Certain system fields (default fields made by Ensightful) such as the owner and the workload of the task are essential for Ensightful's analytics tracking system; therefore they cannot be hidden or removed. However, they can be renamed. Instructors can create a new field and choose from a range of field types that suit their purpose. Changes made to the tasks can be viewed in real-time. As some fields are only visible on the student side, instructors can also see how the milestone would look on the student's task board by clicking "View as Student".
Task manager for instructors to create and edit milestones.
Milestone customization page.
Viewing how milestones look on the student side.
Milestones:
Updated milestone includes a field for resources and a section to track activity history.
When creating a new milestone, instructors can fill in the necessary task information such as title, workload, status, due date, details, and resources. Resources allow instructors to attach or link information that students can reference. An activity history section was also added to allow instructors and students to track changes made to the milestone.
To ensure students know what tasks they would need to complete in order to finish the milestone, the instructor can link or create tasks associated, where they can further break down the task into subtasks. This allows the instructor to break down the milestone into more manageable steps and provide the necessary information for them to complete each step. Once the instructor is done, they can choose to save, schedule, or publish the milestone to each team’s taskboard.
Final thoughts & Takeaways
This was my first major feature that I worked on as the only UX/UI designer. Finding the best approach to this feature involved learning new concepts and skills, as well as seeking feedback early and often. This experience taught me to step out of my comfort zone to ask clarification questions and to communicate with the development team to see what is technically feasible in the design.
As this project is still a work in progress, my next step is to user test with the prototype to validate the designs.