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Optimizing the usability of search & object filtering experience
Role
User Experience Designer
Team
2 Designers (ME), 2 Researchers, 1 PM
Responsibilities
UX Audit, Competitor Analysis, Stakeholder/User Interviews, Ideation, Designing Interface Components, Prototyping, Testing
Timeline
Nov 24 - May 25
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QUICK GLANCE
Exacq is a Video Management System (VMS) designed to manage and monitor surveillance cameras.
Focus: Forensic Search
In VMS, forensic search is the process of reviewing recorded footage to find specific events or objects using advanced filters and search tools.
Design & Business Goal
Enhance the user experience of the forensic search to help prevent the user churn.
The current user experience for performing forensic searches within Exacq VMS is not intuitive or user-friendly. The interface requires improvement to provide a more seamless and enjoyable experience for users.
What problem am I solving and why is it a problem?
Solving the discoverability issue of Exacq’s core forensic search feature, which users are largely unaware of posing a churn risk as competitors offers more intuitive, user-friendly interfaces.
Solution & Impact
80% Stakeholder Satisfaction score.
The redesigned Exacq interface improves the discoverability of Forensic Search capabilities by reorganizing and enhancing key components, empowering users to fully leverage its powerful features.
Laying out a roadmap with two distinct solutions:
Got an opportunity to present the work to the Johnson Controls Executive Team and the presentation was well received.
The presentation prompted an immediate push for product updates.
Short-term: Streamlining the existing workflow through targeted fixes.
Long-term: Defining a future vision with a guided user flow and implied interface.
Why designing two different solutions?
The business envisions a future product experience centered on simplicity and guided user flows. However, due to users’ deep familiarity with the current system, a drastic overhaul risks increased churn. To address this, laid out a strategic roadmap that enhances existing workflows to improve usability in the short term, while gradually introducing a simplified interface aligned with long-term business goals. This approach balances product vision with user needs, enabling a smoother and lower-risk transition.
Short-term solution
Quick usability fixes
✅
Enhanced discoverability
✅
Low dev lift
✅
Immediate updates push
✅
Long-term solution
Guided experience
✅
Scalable & simplified flows
✅
Future-focused design
✅
Gradual rollout
✅
Solution 1: Short-term business goal
Fixing frictions to streamline the existing workflow.
Solution 2: Long-term business goal
Product's future vision includes a guided user flow to help novice to experienced users achieve their goals.
Design Process
Design Thinking: Research, Define, Ideate, Design, and Test.
As it well suits the goal of getting to the root problem and solving it.
EXACQ AND ITS USERS
Existing System
Exacq was designed and developed by developers nearly 20 years ago. Over time, the interface was updated with new features, but user experience was not prioritized. As a result, the system now appears as it does.
Customer Base
Designing for a large customer
base and the strategy to navigate it.
Exacq serves customers across various industries, including Education, Retail, Critical Infrastructure (for example: Energy and Water Management Companies), and many other industries each with unique requirements.
Segmented users to refine design focus and tailor experiences:
1.
The top industries where most of our customers come from.
2.
Prioritizing universal needs while enhancing the search experience.
End Users
Defining End Users
Our end users are security integrators, IT professionals, and anyone responsible for managing a VMS system, regardless of their prior VMS experience. This includes users with no experience, including seasoned veterans.
Security Integrators, IT Staff, and anyone responsible for overlooking VMS.
Naive to Experienced end users.
WANT TO JUMP?
UX Audit
Competitive Analysis
Design Exploration
Design Solution
Concept Test
Business Acceptance Test
Stakeholder & User Interviews
RESEARCH
UX Audit Highlight
Numerous obstacles prevent the users from achieving their goals.
Conducted a UX Audit to identify usability gaps in the existing system.
Cluttered and Disorganized Interface
Unintuitive
Difficult to identify enabled/disabled buttons
Searching for cameras is exhausting
Lack of feature & components prioritization
Lack of System Status & Feedback
Competitor Analysis Highlight
Simplify the experience as much as possible with the use of AI.
With a total of 15+ Competitors' Analysis, it helped understand the current trends of the market and the strengths and weaknesses of the competition.
Competitors are way ahead in Forensic Search with the latest AI object filtering.
Intuitive interfaces with less learning curve.
Advanced search and object filtering for the ease of achieving the users' end goal.
Stakeholders & End User Interviews Highlight
Users are unaware of the Forensic Search Feature capabilities.
Stakeholder and User Interviews shed light on the unknown and shocking insight that users are unable to best utilize the available features as they do not even know such features exist.
Lack of Discoverability
Lack of System Familiarity when a user visits it after a break.
Not suitable for naive users
Cannot explore the system as its too clunky
DEFINE & STRATEGIZE
Problem
A user needs to find instances in recorded footage but struggle because
they are unaware of the Forensic Search capabilities due to lack of discoverability.
Strategizing to prevent user churn
Proposing two distinct solutions to tackle the problem.
Two solutions focused on the short-term business goal for immediate product fixes and the long-term business goal, laying out a roadmap for the product's future vision.
1.
Short-term business goal: Fixing issues to enhance the existing workflow.
2.
Long-term business goal: Support scalability and provide a simplified experience through a guided workflow.
IDEATION
Ideation and Design Explorations
Explored 5+ workflows to fix the current workflow and devise a new user flow with the goal of how can we make this a simplest experience?
DESIGN
Solution 1: Focused on the short-term business goal
Hiccup #1.1
Camera panel itself has many hiccups.
No way to identify online/offline cameras.
Hard to identify cameras with analytics capabilities.
Design Solution #1.1
Making the camera panel easy to use.
Disabling the cameras that are offline.
Putting analytics icon for easier indentification.
Introducing cameras within the same loc for ease of accessing without searching for them.
Hiccup #1.2
The Search Button on the search page is hard to find and users often miss on hitting it.
Little visibility of the search button.
Design Solution #1.2
Search as the primary button, easy to find and hit.
Bigger and prominent Search Button.
Hiccup #1.3
The "Show Filters" checkbox is not at all discoverable, making the users completely unaware of it.
The filters box is not discoverable.
Design Solution #1.3
Popping the filters panel.
Automatically popping up the fitlers panel if a user selects any camera with analytics capabilities.
Hiccup #1.4
Cluttered and not so useful filters panel.
The filters panel lacks visual hierarchy.
Default expanded hierarchy of the filter options which makes it hard to use.
Poor action prioritization of buttons.
Users are required to hit the search button after applying the filters and they often miss on it.
Design Solution #1.4
Popping the filters panel.
Users can choose to expand the filter options for further filteration.
Confidence level for ease of search of video instances.
Prioritized the use of buttons based on the use, shifting other buttons like reset and delete at the top.
Introducing "apply filters" button for users to intuitively hit it.
How does these fixes improves the discoverability of the forensic search feature?
All of these components described above are essential to performing a forensic search in Exacq; together, they form the complete search experience. However, core elements like the filter panel and search buttons suffer from poor visibility on the interface, directly impacting their discoverability and hindering effective use of the feature.
Solution 2: Focused on the long-term business goal
Design Solution #2.1
This solution shifts key search components to the left and introduces guidance to support the user through each step.
All the required search inputs aligned on the left for focus.
Showing recent searches for ease of history access.
Expanding panels as a user inputs for a search.
Final screen with search results.
TESTING
Concept & Business Acceptance Testing
80% Stakeholder Satisfaction Score.
Conducted concept testing with stakeholders due to constraints in testing directly with end users, as the business aimed to manage expectations around unreleased features limited by technical feasibility.
However, the stakeholders shared a willingness to test the short-term solution with users.
Learnings & Takeaways
Importance of user segmentation when dealing with a large and diverse user base.
Navigating the intersection of user, business, and engineering needs challenged me to think holistically, ensuring every solution met diverse demands seamlessly.
While we strive for innovation, supporting older interfaces is essential for user retention.
My work doesn't end here, check out more
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