Project Overview

Platform: Desktop

Project brief: Design a Chrome plugin that can pull research articles from the web and import them to an internal database

Approach: Discovery workshop with stakeholders | user epics & stories | design sprint | user and interaction flows | wireframes 

My role: Facilitated the discovery workshop, created user flows, built wireframes, and defined interaction flows

Project Breakdown

1. Background

UL’s Not for Profit team oversees multiple safety and educational websites. They frequently post relevant research articles on these sites, but their process of downloading, saving, and uploading these articles was disorganized and cumbersome. They asked us to help make this process easier.

We were asked to build a plugin that allows users to save articles and upload them to an internal site (the “Curation Center”) where they can make the articles available for any internal or external API. We also built the Curation Center where the articles are stored.

2. User Epics & Stories

I created user epics and stories in Trello to plan design and development sprints. I created the epics based on the proposed asset upload process and created the stories from the business requirements that were discussed during the client workshop. 

epics and stories.png

3. User Flows

I built two flows to show how a user would access the Curation Center and add an asset (i.e. PDF) via the plugin. 

user flows

4. Wireframes

I leveraged existing design patterns and went through several iterations based on feedback from clients and developers. I built a clickable prototype of the wireframes for client presentations.

Add Assets

Once an asset has been uploaded to the Curation Center, the user is required to enter information about the asset. If the user wants to make the asset available for the API or the internal portal, additional form fields will appear. I created wireframes to show all possible “Add Asset” states.

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Add An Asset.png

Sharing Functionality

During a stakeholder interview, I learned users will want to share 15-25 assets at once, which led me to adjust the original design and add pagination.

Updating Sharing.png

5. Final Thoughts

This was my first time creating a plugin and database for a client. The most difficult part of the project was figuring out how to make the end product valuable to more than just the small internal team that requested it. We solved for this by adding a “UL Properties” category on the “Add Asset” screen. This allows users to select which UL sites they’d like to make the asset available to.

Note: I accepted a new position after I handed off the wires and annotations to the development team so I do not have images of the final product.