Equinix Quick Tasks: Notifications
View the Top Priority Tasks
Intro
Equinix, the leader of co-located data centers, is serving multiple user groups who all needed to have access to a notification system, but for different purposes. So far Equinix used different interfaces for each user group – which caused communication issues.
Goal
Customers want to view the top priority tasks as soon as they login to portal and take quick action so that they can unblock their business operations from any impact.
My Responsibilities
Defining the meaning of a Quick Task and coming up with a hierarchy and
treatment of each notification groups.
My Team
Design Manager
Designer
UX Architect
UX Content Writer
Product Manager
Stakeholders
The Current Design
Notification Center Dashboard
User Needs - Quick Completion of the Top Priority Tasks
We started this phase by doing some discovery and research work. We had interviews with several internal stakeholders to understand their needs and how their platforms work. We then proceeded to start defining the items on our list. Important needs to come out of this study included:
System Banner to show top priority notifications that users must view to take quick action.
Quick Task from the Global Bell drawer and the Notification Center List View
Discovery
Top priority notification types
Notification flows from the message center
1. Stakeholder Interview
We had interviews with several internal stakeholders to understand their needs and how their platforms work. We then proceeded to start defining the items on our list.
1. List out Quick Task types and usage
2. Define the meaning of what is quick task
Quick Task Types and Usage
After the stakeholder interviews about the notification types, we have mapped out how it would carry on with different notification tools.
Defining the meaning of a Quick Task
The definition of Quick Task is to help users take action on notifications that is critical for them from a modal window or side drawer. Some of the example of the Quick Task types are approve/reject and providing comments, which can be completed in 1 or 2 steps.
Two Type of Quick Tasks
Next up came design exploration. I'd noticed a trend in using a 'dashboard concept' to show important The next step was to map out the two situations users would be directed to to take action, navigating to take action and the situation where users don’t need to navigate to take action.
Quick Task Patterns
The next step was to map out the two situations users would be directed to to take action, navigating to
take action and the situation where users don’t need to navigate to take action.
Heirarchy and Treatment of Notification Group
After brainstorming with UX Architect, we came up with notification group categories by criticality and time-sensitivity. We also listed quick task types, examples of each notification group use cases, and how the
notification group will be delivered.
Journeys of Quick Tasks
After combing through user needs, I had mapped out the possible journeys users would be taking both to and from the page in order to understand what needed to live on the page, as well as thinking more holistically about circulating users to the right page.
High Level
Critical Level
For critical global events, the user interacts with the modal window to view incident status or dismiss it. Once they dismiss it then the notification stays in the system banner until the issue gets resolved
High Level
For service impacting incidents, the user interacts with the system banner with a text link to go to the notification center list view side panel to view the details.
Ideation: Popup Design, System Banners, and Categories
With the user needs discovered and the notification group mapped, I then moved on to designing how each notification groups will be delivered, as well as exploring color options to differentiate notification groups.
Critical Level: Global Events Modal Window
Modal Window exploration for critical incidents use cases
Critical & High Level System Banners
System banners are used in both critical and high level incidents notifications and I tried to explore color options to differentiate notification groups.
System Banner Option 1 - Accordian approach
System Banner Option 2 - Carousel approach
User Testing on Proposed Design
When creating the usability study, we partnered with the UX research team to create a test plan to improve the overall user experience with our customers. Our goals with this study was to assess users’ preferences regarding system banners, as well as finding out what type of notifications users would like to see in the system banner.
We first reviewed and summarized our testers’ recordings. We synthesized the information and separated it into sections. We then used a color code system to classify the feedback into categories. Finally, we summarized the findings and presented recommendations to follow.
Prototypes for two system banners were then tested with users. Key takeaways from this research included:
Stacked banner is the preferred option
Almost all users preferred the stacked banner design over the carousel one. It was easier for them to view all of the notifications at once and take their time to read them.
Stacked Banner
Carousel Banner
Refined System Banner Design
What I Learned
Running System Banner User Research independently has taught me:
Drafting the questions and creating the tasks take time. We needed to review them with different people to make sure they were understood.
We need to be really specific with the questions if we want users to focus on the items we need feedback on.
It was difficult to get our users to respond right away.
Even though we mentioned that the prototype was partially clickable, users still expected to click on everything
Some of the comparison questions might be biased since users replied to the second design based on what they had seen in the first one.