YEAR ONE GOAL
Perform the research needed to confidently deliver a well-defined, research-backed product proposal and wireframes that demonstrate key product flows and features by the end of the project’s grant cycle.
PRODUCT
Find Recovery Housing Now (FRHNKY)
CLIENT
Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC)
PRODUCT SUMMARY
As a follow-up to a recovery treatment center locator, KIPRC approached APAX to work together on their newly grant-funded project to build an in-depth recovery housing software (to be launched initially in 10 states), which includes a recovery housing locator for the public and a management backend, resident tracker and more for Recovery Housing owners and operators.
FRHNKY GENERAL PROJECT TIMELINE
For this first phase of work, I worked closely with Tyler, the client point of contact on the project, to define the product, develop timelines, perform and analyze the research, and then create the designs. After the initial informational meetings and laying out a rough timeline in Smartsheet with my Project Manager for the first phase of work, we got started.
We envisioned the product having three portals:
Directory: Search for Recovery Houses
Training: Make educational materials and courses available for all audience types
Resident Outcomes Management System: Facilitate record keeping and track Recovery Housing outcomes
Once the project kicked off, the first major steps for me were to ramp myself up on the industry and then perform stakeholder interviews to inform our early product plan. I was given a list of nationwide Recovery Housing industry leaders and workers from KIPRC, and went to work defining the goals for the interviews, creating an approved script for each stakeholder type and scheduling everything. I ran each interview with the support of a KIPRC employee on each call, debriefed with them afterwards and took and reviewed my own raw notes at the end of each interview. At the end, we had talked to 14 interviewees from nine different audience types and seven different states, so we had a lot of good feedback and ideas to sift through. After the final interview, I spent time analyzing all of our notes and findings, creating matrices of all of the information to help look for and identify trends in the feedback that we received.
I summed up my research findings in a presentation by breaking it down to our learnings, challenges and specific requests for each of the three portals, sprinkled with some quotes, anecdotes and insight into those requests to give it more depth and understanding. This presentation was given to all of KIPRC and RCOE (an important stakeholder behind the grant). You can view the presentation slide deck here.
Once the Design Doc was finalized, I was set loose to turn the document into a product flow and wireframes. Tyler and I defined which areas of the product to focus on for this first round of foundational designs and then I went to work on flows, fields, screens and usability testing in spans of two-week sprints, which ended with design check-in meetings at the end of each with the client to gather feedback to iterate on.
At the end of the first phase of this project, we had done thorough research via stakeholder interview, focus groups and were prepping for usability testing, hit all of our deliverables and were confident that FRHNKY would continue to be funded. I was requested by name to be on this project full-time by the client once the funding was approved the year after. Professional relationships were built and we were all excited to see this project continue to grow.
This was a project that I was the lead on for over two years and am more than happy to go into detail on other parts of it, but for brevity’s sake, I chose to focus on the beginning to set a foundational stage for a potential further discussion and to highlight some of the research portion of my background.
*When I left my role at APAX Software, I gave them notice with the promise to stay on for up to six months to give them time to find a new designer that we were confident about replacing me on this project. Find Recovery Housing Now recently launched in September 2022. You can check out the public site here.
From there, we had a clearer vision for the product and what would be helpful for future users. This informed the Design Document that Tyler and I had been working on, and we were able to call a first draft of it “finished” after this first research phase ended in June and share it with the rest of the KIPRC and grant stakeholders.
I introduced the Design Document idea in 2019 and became an integral part of the Discovery and Design processes at APAX over the past couple of years. It originated as a personal way to get all of my thoughts organized and on (digital) paper, ask more specific questions, keep track of minute details and discussion points with the client. It has since formed to be a source of truth for projects, and has been invaluable both for myself, our developers and the client to have all of our thoughts and details organized in one reliable space. I always start them off by listing project goals and user types, and then go page by page of the application that we are developing and list components, fields, notes, questions, etc., sprinkled with comments, questions, recommendations and notes as needed.