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The dashboard is the main component of the app that allows administrators to interact with users, create content, schedule events for users, and monitor the loan book, transactions, and so on.
To create an admin panel that will contain dashboard with user insights, Maintenance of loan book, Managing Prepaid card transactions, To be able to create content and engage within the community.
I was hired as the first and only designer on the team to work closely with developers and finance experts. My work consisted of research, designing and prototyping for the main product as well as working on support materials, such as building a website and designing features for possible platform expansion that was not on the main roadmap.
-Research
-Information Architecture
-User Experience
-Visual Design
The admin panel was started as a curated platform of user insights from the app.
While this was the initial thought process, it soon became clear that having less functions doesn’t solve the purpose of having a dashboard. My task was to rethink the web portal and identify an experience that enables the administrator to perform more suitable actions required.
Having an app prototype already ready, we started looking at the people’s behaviour with respect to financial transactions and community engagement. We learnt that most users became just the consumers of content and was also interested in interacting with people who are behind the creation of the very platform they are accessing everyday.
With this in mind, the admin panel was designed as a core product that completes the app, allowing the administrator/stakeholders to be a part of the user’s engagement, create content for them and also learn about the user’s behaviour all in one go.
I started interacting with our stakeholders and different teams to get all requirements of the admin panel on the board. Here, I focused on asking open-ended questions about their expectations and use cases of the admin panel, to learn as much as possible about our team and validate my understanding of them from my provisional personas.
From the above white boarding, I was able to uncover key insights which helped me understand who users are and what they truly need. We took the major use cases and also the challenges that come along with it to design the first level wireframes that can be built out.
All key metrics tracked are directly derived from user inputs on the app.
I used everything that I have learned so far from my research and interviews with the team ,to create provisional personas who will the key users of the admin panel. In the initial stage we weren't able to identify major pain points- the simple idea was to get manual process done from admin panel which can later evolve into detail oriented automated - dashboard.
The key stakeholders who use the dashboard are going to be :
The journey map of admin panel is fairly straight forward and very task oriented.
We wanted to keep the user as the key focus and wanted to see all things any user does so as to understand their adoption and engagement behaviour.
We conducted internal research to drive our next phase. These are the key insights that defined the launch version of the product:
To see the live metrics and engagement of users became the first sole focus of the stakeholders since it helps them [ and us ] create better product solutions.
Engagement with users also became a high priority as the need for retention was high. Setting the right user feed helps user engage and spend more time on the app.
The source of users are different- partner, organic, user referrals - but users are users. Tracking the source gives more insight. There is a need for user database along with source.
Community content has a targeted approach- mainly to create a sense of a close knit group for the women. Seeding content from the users- helps enable other users to start using the community to post more.
Customers expect community admin to know them and serve personalised recommendations. So bridging the gap in capturing their interest and delivering it to the community manager is required.
I decided to use crazy 8s method so that I could quickly generate as many ideas as I could. After this point, I started laying out a strategy to help determine what goals I’m trying to meet and to help me determine which solutions I need to prioritise.
We started creating the first iteration of wireframes to include the basic functionalities. We had to take a inverted funnel approach to get the right flow in the admin panel. As we created the wireframes we got to know the key specs we might need and some liberties we can take [since this is only for an internal user purpose] . Compiling these, we actually identified the frames to include our key functionalities.
The next iteration involved creating detailed wireframes to include all and every functionality we mapped with the user metrics we wanted to achieve.
Created cards in basic style guide - derived from the initial wireframes which can be reused in all screens
To start planning the architecture of the application and where these features would fit into it, I created an application map to organise the screens in a way that would be logical and intuitive for our user. The goal was to create a simple and clean navigation so any team using the dashboard would have easy access and quicker turnaround time for each task that needs to be carried out.
Using my understanding of the the user’s interaction with the app, our goals, the architecture, and major tasks needed for our internal tasks also, I worked on making informed decisions on by sketching low-fidelity wireframes.
The Lo-fi wireframes were then translated to High fidelity wireframes which we wanted to explore with the team and all the tasks that they would like to perform from the admin panel.
Each action on the admin panel is directly linked to the app- and translates into behaviour that interacts with the end user directly.
Below is an example of one use-case of creating content- "Adding a Post" from the admin panel- which would reflect real time on the app and be managed from the panel.
For the Loans use case - I wanted to dive even deeper and get a better understanding of the overall journey underwriting team would be taking throughout the process. I wanted to better empathise with the scenario our end user may be in, different decisions she would be making, and also the different paths she might take to complete the key tasks I identified. To do this, I created a user flow to step into both user flows- so that both are synchronised from the app and the admin panel.
The initial idea to support the app with content was to create one admin account onto the same app- with new credentials and become a super user with extra actions.
Creating the admin panel opened up a whole new possibility to understand our user behaviours, track their metrics, engage with them directly and more importantly- show them that we are not bots. We are actual people listening and writing to them which meant so much more to them that the actual products.
I started testing the implications of admin panel in various settings with the focus group on zoom- to get broader understanding of its potential.
As with any project, there were some things that worked well and others that didn't.
-One of my biggest learnings from this project was that how well a team works together really makes or breaks a project.
-Being able to explore without getting attached to a particular design was very helpful for us to think objectively.
-Main learning point for whole team was that each team and everyone’s role is completely interlinked and impacts our users.
-Everybody needs the admin panel- with more and more functionality at each level.
Product needs to showcase more details and functionality- but giving too many functions for the team members also makes some processes too transparent and democratic. This became the next problem statement to solve for.
Next steps of work in progress-
Adding types of posts on community to create different types of content
Partner dashboard- to reach our sources and get user acquisition
Restricting access for each part of admin panel with specific user ids- so that we can automate more of the u/w process without worrying about data leakage.
With previous learnings, some of the functionalities come with Super Admin access only to seal and protect user data.
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