MN Department of Human Services

MN Department of Human Services is responsible for creating Out-of-Home Placement Plans for children who need to relocate to another address. These plans are typically created for children who suffer from maltreatment and other forms of neglect.

MY ROLE

UX Researcher | UX/UI Designer | User Interview Observer and Note-Taker

Overview

The MN Department of Human Services asked my team to analyze their current out-dated system and create an interactive prototype with improvements.

KEY DELIVERABLES

PROCESS WORK

METHODS

Cognitive Walkthrough | Task Analysis | Contextual Inquiry | User Interviews | User Stories and Scenarios | Screen and User Flows | High Fidelity Wireframes | Interactive Prototyping | Design Systems

TOOLS

Figma | FigJam | Google Docs | Google Sheets | Zoom | Slack

Problem Statement

The MN Department of Human services is responsible for creating Out-of-Home Placement Plans for children who need to relocate to another address. These plans are typically created for children who suffer from maltreatment and other forms of neglect. This plan helps ensure the child’s safety and wellbeing as well as assist in permanency planning. Unfortunately, the current user interface, Social Service Information System (SSIS), makes this a difficult process to complete for caseworkers and case aides.

There are many problems with this dated interface. Upon first glance, users are overwhelmed by the information overload.

Ideating Accelerators

The MN Department of Human Services tasked me with creating an interactive prototype to suggest recommendations to the current user interface. The current user interface to create this document, SSIS, overwhelms users. The sheer amount of information combined with the dated, clunky interface causes users undue stress and workarounds in order to meet the demands of creating an OHPP. 

With this in mind, I wanted to place high value on the caseworker’s time and to create an interface that would be more efficient and streamlined. In short, I wanted to recommend changes that would help accelerate the process of completing an OHPP and give the user real-time feedback so that they would not be overwhelmed by the process and could plan their time accordingly.

A progress bar lets users know where they are at and gives them real time feedback. Features like this were not present in the current interface. Users were essentially maneuvering “in the dark.”

More Problems

  • The current system does not do well with error prevention; all progress can be lost at any time if the user does not save. 

  • The system has redundant and irrelevant information that is not necessary to each case. The system is also unaware of what information is and is not required. 

  • The caseworkers do not have a good visibility of system status and it can be difficult to know where they are in the process. 

  • Information is not prioritized based on client need; it might be ordered in such a way for legal reasons or perhaps randomly. 

The tiny save icon at the top has to be manually clicked every time a user enters information if they don’t want progress to be lost. This causes user frustration and mistrust with the current interface since it is prone to crashing.

Iteration and Evaluation

The first step in the process was to do a cognitive walkthrough for the primary tasks that caseworkers complete in the documentation phase to submit an OHPP. For each task four questions were asked:

  • Will the user try to achieve the right outcome?

  • Is the correct action visible?

  • Is there a clear connection between the control and the resulting action?

  • Is there sufficient and/or appropriate feedback?

We determined that many of the tasks were not user friendly in the current interface. My team and I made initial recommendations based on these preliminary findings. 

We conducted interviews with two caseworkers who used the current interface frequently. Both caseworkers said that the dated nature of the interface made the experience of completing an OHPP less than ideal. The caseworkers had to use workarounds or had to recall very specific actions in order to complete the document. Examples include locating the “Save” button after entering any information so that not all progress would be lost, and remembering which information was required and not required. Even worse, the system did not recognize that some of the questions being asked were often not applicable, which could cause confusion and added a lot of time to the process as a whole. 

From there, we drafted a Primary User Research Protocol to help us uncover the shortcomings of the current interface firsthand from primary users. The goal of this was to gather insights into how we could improve the usability and the functionality of the current interface. By having a focused plan, we would be able to learn more from our user interviews.

I then went to work on a Research Findings and Prototype Plan to help synthesize and focus my research results so that I could start ideating on an interactive prototype. I summarized my most important findings, wrote 3 user stories and scenarios, and sketched some rough low-fidelity wireframes to help get my brain spinning. I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go next and began to build my interactive prototype in Figma. Over the next couple days, I built out my digital wireframes with the key features that would make this a better user experience and more usable app for caseworkers. 

Final Design Solution

Pre-screening questions: These questions will determine what information is required in the OHPP documentation process and eliminate redundant and irrelevant information.

Error message: An error message will appear if the caseworker does not enter the correct information in the required field. This will ensure that the caseworker completes everything necessary and accurately so that there are no errors in the final document.

Import feature: An import feature allows caseworkers to import documents or import text to help accelerate the process of completing an OHPP. 

Confirmation screen: The confirmation screen provides validation that the OHPP process is complete and the caseworker can print or share with one-click.

My final design solution was an interactive prototype with a video walk through that I presented to MN Department of Human Services stakeholders. I also gave stakeholders access to my documentation and annotations within my Figma file. 

Based on the cognitive walkthrough and contextual inquiry, I focused my redesign on making the new SSIS user interface more user friendly and streamlined. 

In particular, I added several key features that would enhance the user experience and also the usability of the product. Key features include:

Chat feature: A live chat box is available and the caseworker can connect with a support professional who can help them troubleshoot any issues.

Auto-save feature: The auto-save feature will save the current progress so that the caseworker will not lose all the entered information if the system crashes or something else unexpected happens.

Next Steps and Learnings

There is a lot of work that needs to be done in order to create a better user interface for caseworkers. Since I had limited time to complete this project, I was not able to do a complete overhaul to the current system. I think that I made good suggestions with my interactive prototype, but there are undoubtedly more features and solutions that I could have proposed. 

If I had more time, I would like to do more research, deconstruct the current user interface further, and iterate to create a better digital product. Since the current interface is so dated and clunky, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make this a better user experience for the important work that caseworkers do each and every day.