Approach
To achieve success, a user-centric design approach was followed.
Experience Design Process
General Project Overview
The project started with aggregated abstract insights and evolved to a final concrete solution.
EY’s Global Risk Management team engaged the Enterprise Technology organization to assist in the definition and delivery of a transformational Incident Management Experience (IMX). The project aimed to bring together a diverse information ecosystem to create an automated and cohesive experience for executing command, control, and communications for situations that impact staff and business operations. Flexibility, efficiency, scalability, and pervasive access were also essential for success.
Technically, the solution would leverage Microsoft's cloud service platform, facilitating automation, instant collaboration, and overall management of events - interfacing with Everbridge's Mass notification platform and other system's data.
The solution needed to reach five global regions, 150 countries, 700 office locations, each with a location-specific crisis management plan and readiness checklists for over 90 incident-type categories - all with associated templates.
My research led user centered design approach and robust product development background allowed for the successful creation and deployment of an MVP. A scalable framework other organizations could customize for their own needs was also delivered.
A time-measured >90% operational efficiency increase was achieved - exceeding expectations. Unveiled at EY’s Global Security conference in Boston, MA the solution was revered by the international attendees.
The Global Risk Management organization's leadership was eager to externally socialize and further develop the solution after seeing immediate value. Additional enhancement funding was awarded.
Note: This case study only presents project excerpts. Content has intentionally been obscured and presented in lower resolution to protect IP and solution design details.
To achieve success, a user-centric design approach was followed.
The project started with aggregated abstract insights and evolved to a final concrete solution.
The project kicked off with an initial gathering of cross-functional business stakeholders and a vision was shared - covering what, why, whom, and a definition of success.
As a globally distributed team of 15, my first task was planning and conducting a virtual collaborative design thinking workshop - faciliating needs analysis. The effort allowed the project team to better understand the problem space - ensuring all stakeholder's base needs and any known dependencies were identified.
With the workshop output, I created a low-fidelity concpet sketch to facilitate team discussion around the vision. Several on the team were domain subject matter experts , but product development was new for them. Here, I brought my development expertise, leading the team through a structured design process.
Project funding had not been secured. To assist in appropriation, I created a story visualization of the team's idea.
The animated walk-through was submitted with a business case. A funding committee reviewed the submission and the concept was immediately understood. Minimal viable product (MVP) funding was allocated.
Deep investigative research began. I planned and moderated multiple design thinking workshops using Miro - capturing business, technical, user needs, and use cases.
Where requirements gaps and questions remained, I performed follow-up contextual inquiry with individual subject matter experts from various geographies to better understand specific end-user needs, current workflows, regional and regulatory constraints, along with other critical aspects for solution definition and success.
In parallel, I performed expert reviews of existing systems, identified additional dependencies, and continued with workshops to close experience gaps in the existing highly manual process. Findings from the reviews were used to establish an experience baseline on which improvement metrics would be measured.
Through contextual inquiry, primary and sub-processes were identified. I captured all user type workflows, associated systems, data, and documents considered input, output, or conditional triggers. Unique user attributes were established based on location, rank, role, incident type, associated tasks, etc. - informing user personas.
A composite picture of an incident flow was documented - this had never been done. Subject matter experts verified accuracy and brought additional components unique to specific roles and conditions which required handling.
Requirements were documented collaboratively during participatory virtual workshops and then moved into an Excel framework where use cases were tracked for collective stakeholder sorting, review, input, and prioritization.
As requirements developed and evolved, I created a formal structured Microsoft Word template for detailed documentation and version control. This approach was necessary for requirements traceability, scope-creep elimination, and final user acceptance test case preparation. The formal Word document would ultiately become the single source of truth for the entire solution and the blueprint an external developer would follow when coding the production system.
With the draft functional requirements and research artifacts, user and system flows were created along with early UI designs and prototypes.
Constant stakeholder input was leveraged, facilitating the participatory design process and ensuring any requirements gaps were filled. My user flows and service blueprints became instrumental in identifying requirements and process gaps - illuminating opportunities as well. The abstract experience design began to take shape along with an information architecture.
All aspected of the solution design were captured in flows.
Highly detailed requirements articulating every aspect of the solution and user experience were captured and shared with the external developer contracted to build the production system.
(Wireframe To High Fidelity Figma Prototype)
I developed an EY Teams instance and solution experience design system in Figma. This allowed for rapid development from a low fidelity wireframe to a highly poslished interactive prototype that would be used for user testing.
A first run user provisioning experience was developed along side the base experience. This would was crucial to ensure only authorized users would have permission to accecss the service. All others would be routed to an informational page where a requests for access was available.
Based on global user testing, iterations to the design were made and final prodcution assets were tested for global regional acceptance before deployment.
To support the general user experience and provide a means to extend and evolve the solution, a backend administrative experience was developed. This component allowed for new templates to be introduced, user permissions updates, and general management of all supporting system components.
Verification with various user types was performed throughout development and stakeholder voices drove modifications to UX and UI aspects of the solution. As development proceeded, a high fidelity interactive prototype of the solution was tested globally, where localization findings were used to create a v2 product roadmap.
I worked with a senior research partner to develop the testing protocol which they would independently follow, ensuring unbiased and diverse global user feedback was acquired.
Tasks and target participants were identified. All project stakeholders reviewed the study design and provided feedback to the UX research lead that would conduct the test sessions.
A working prototype build in Figma was tested. To assist the UX Research lead, I produced sequential flows of each task. User and system actions were also articulated with each step. The mapping would assist the moderator in preparing and running the virtual test sessions.
When the MVP was rolled out at EY's Global Security Conference in Boston, MA, the respsonse was overwhelmingly positive.
Jay's contributions will simplify the process for our stakeholders many of which are senior leaders across the EY global organization.
Director - Global Business Resilience
Jay takes the opportunity to listen and really understand the needs of the stakeholders and then develops a technological idea to meet the need of the team. His years of experience outside EY has really complimented the work he's doing in the firm and has provided real value as we work through this technological solution.
U.S. Central Regional Security Manager
Jay consistently adds value and does a great job in challenging the team’s assumptions. Asking us to think of alternative approaches, helps us come to a better final product and to better understand why we are making certain decisions.
Global Physical Security & Technology - Strategic Lead
Jay really listens to understand the needs of stakeholders and builds effective solutions to meet those requirements.
IMX Project Manager - Global Security
Jay has provided valuable feedback by making Global Security aware of a gap in the existing Everbridge Mass Notification System. Doing so has made us aware of a glitch in need of prompt action and repair.
Crisis Management & Business Continuity - Global Security
This is the best Crisis Management software I’ve ever seen.
Director - Security Risk Management Leader - Europe West
This is going to change Crisis Management at EY.
Director - Risk Management – Global Delivery Services
