Context
Xenon Arc delivers Advanced Distribution Solutions that drive growth, insight and simplicity for industrial materials producers. I interned at Xenonarc during the summer of 2015. Below is a case study of the first loop of the Xenonarc community portal project that I was assigned. Unfortunately, due to my departure the project was never completed.
[To this day, the best free snackbar ever!]
Role: I was tasked with the User-Research, Interface Design, and the Full-Stack Development of this project.
Live Video Demo
Technologies Incorporated: This was a web application created using the Python Django Framework, and is an example of a fullstack application which was based off a MYSQL database.
Conclusion: The Xenonarc community portal was definitely a necessity. The bigger the organization gets, the more information pertaining to its employees has to become accessible. The community portal gave workers a real-time updating calendar to shine light on upcoming events, a centralized file repository for easily accessing information regarding their benefits, and allowed them the technology to easily share work-related documents across departments.
What I Learned: Through this project I learned a lot about user-research, market research, and was able to apply my understandings of user-interface design to real world applications. I also got to practice media queries, and responsive web design. It was unfortunate that the project manager, who assigned me this task, ended up leaving the company.
Problem
- Currently no centralized method for updates on news, and events other than the company slack channel.
- No centralized repository for employee benefits related documents.
[Breathe Understanding of the Problem.]
Light Research Study
*My Project Manager gave me this outline to help start me on my research. It’s more market researcher oriented, but there are some similarities.
[Target Market Research Template.]
[Stakeholder Research(5 Contextual Interviews + 20 Survey Responses).]
[Current File Distribution Methodology.]
[Affinity Diagramming used to categorize contextual survey data.]
Hypothesis: Creating a community portal for Xenonarc where employees are able to get updates on news, events, and make use of a unified file distribution solution, will alleviate a lot of the communication problems existing between departments.
User Flow + Site Flow
[On The Left Side Is The Site Flow, Right Side Is The User Flow.]
Wireframing
[First Loop Wireframes.]
[960 Grid Application.]
Presentation Layout
[Events Page.]
[Benefits Page.]
[Letter of Recommendation.]