Admin Portal
Pnyka — 2018
Once we had an MVP product ready for customers, we quickly realized that we could not take on the burden of running all of their discussions for them. We needed a way for customers to create and run their own discussions so that we could support them in their use of the platform, rather than have total control over their use of the platform.
User stories
How are our customers using pnyka?
Our customers consisted of small communities, primarily schools and cities, who wanted to use us to encourage dialogue around issues they face, as well as to get insights into how their members felt about said issues. From speaking with the leaders of these communities, we realized that they were strongly relying on us to inform them how to use the product. This meant that, while they had a good handle on the topics they wanted to discuss, they were relying heavily on us to tell them the best way to schedule these discussions. Our conclusion was that we needed the admin portal to be relatively structured, rather than overly flexible, to ensure we were leading admin users down a path of success.
Defining the mvp
We were a small team, so designing a full-fledged, robust portal off the bat was just not realistic. Instead, we broke down the aspects of scheduling into the bare minimum components to build first, while ensuring that the additional features we needed could easily be added to the engineering roadmap down the line. We broke the feature down into 2 phases of feature capabilities — the first was the bare minimum needed to get started using the product, the second of which were things we could hack until we could build them into the platform.
So…how might we allow users to schedule an Assembly for their community without needing or wanting outside help?
Phase 1 :
Scheduling Assemblies
Registration beginning and end times
Live discussion beginning and end times
Reviewing and editing Assemblies
Monitoring Assemblies
Number of discussion groups created
Number of messages sent
Phase 2:
Addressing flagged messages
Review flags
Take action on inappropriate messages from members
Viewing insights from each Assembly
Ideation
After we decided on the list of needs for the first version of the Admin Portal feature, I got to work sketching out how this might work. This process primarily consisted on playing around with different paths the user could take to accomplish going from wanting to schedule an assembly all the way through viewing the progress of a live Assembly discussion. From here, I boiled down the process into 3 manageable steps, initiated by a clear call to action.
Why? The idea was that each step was set up in a template-style format, so all users had to do was add in the details that made the most sense for their individual community. This allowed us to simultaneously teach the user how to structure an Assembly event, while also guiding them down the path for an Assembly event structure that we knew made past users most successful.
Prototypes
Now that I had a general idea of how to structure the scheduling process for a first-time user, I began sketching out ways the interface could handle each step. I tried to put myself in the users shoes: what would be the first thing I’m looking for on this page?
Wireframes
Sketching out various ideas got me close to an idea I thought might work, so, after getting buy in from the team, I started throwing together some high-fidelity mock ups to see how it would look in practice. Before tossing it into the hands of engineers, I first put together a protoype in Invision and sent it to a few of the community leaders to get their feedback.
You can find the prototype here: https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/BSNFGKG3VKG#/screens/312918758_Admin_-_Assemblies_-not_Scrolled-
MVP Designs
Phew! The community leaders came back with very positive feedback, meaning I was set for finalizing the designs. After a bunch of playing around, I finally felt that I had landed in a good place. The UI handled phase 1 well and allowed for the easy addition of phase 2 down the line.
