Human problem
City Council members are elected officials with day jobs. At any time, there can be a breaking current event about which they need to have informed discussions with constituents and media.
For example, suppose citizens perceive that crime is rising in their neighborhood and ask how the city plans to address the problem. The Council Member might call the Chief of Police for facts about recent break-ins and to understand the overall crime trend in the area.
Business problem
The city wanted to reduce delay by giving City Council members and other officials real-time access to facts and quick analysis from the various city departments, tailored by geographical area. It would limit interruptions to city staff. However, the current dashboard design wasn't meeting their needs.
Starting point for city dashboard redesign
Design approach
User interface reviews to find out what was liked and disliked about the current product dashboard.
Personas to imagine a day in the life of an official as she juggles her career, family, and council duties.
Design workshops for the cross-functional team (product management, engineering, design) to consider the design and technology, such as how to keep the user informed during her lunch meeting.
Design playbacks to align the team and validate the design with the sponsor users.
Challenges
Access to end users Because City Council Members were not available, I used city executives as proxies because they too were target users for city status reporting. Also, the product manager helped to broaden the validation to other clients (other cities).
Executive stakeholder opinions The design team had a blank slate to redesign the dashboard. The engineering VP wanted us to emulate a traditional but pretty dashboard he'd seen recently. Our design executive encouraged us to break the mold, but I worried about being too edgy for the target users.
I formulated a 3-day "Design Blitz" for each designer to create a concept. Executives listened as users from the client (city) shared likes and dislikes about each one, which shifted the conversation to user needs, instead of fixating on one designer or executive vision too soon.
Human outcome
City Council Members could see data-driven status reports and enjoyed detailed investigative capability about events in their respective geographical areas, such as wards. Despite their hectic lives, they were prepared to have informed discussions with the media and constituents at any time, without delaying while they or their aides gathered details.
Business outcome
The dashboard was delivered in the IBM Intelligent Operations Center product where it could be rolled out to City Council Members and other officials via software as a service (the cloud).
My design concept for an immersive city dashboard