Product (Terminal) Settings

 

Overview

 

Objective

The two main goals for this project are:

  1. Create a full design system for Terminal Settings.

  2. Host all Terminal Settings in a new centralized UI via an API that each application team would call in order to display their settings using the new design system in the centralized UI.

  3. Pitch the project to top management in order to get enough resources and backup for prioritization on the applications’ side.


Problem

The Terminal Product is very powerful, yet it is not the most intuitive tool to use. Why? Well, as the product grew over the years , more teams were created without a design (or engineering) system in place. That led to inconsistencies across applications, one of them being “app” settings. There over 10k apps in the Terminal, and most of them do not use the correct APIs, design principles or guidelines for displaying their settings, making it difficult for the user to find, use and save them intuitively.

My involvement

This was one of my first projects at Bloomberg. I am the only designer working on this, with support from my managers and engineering colleagues. This project is crucial for the modernization of the Terminal, which is a goal to achieve in the next years given that rising competitive products are perceived as more user-friendly and modern. With the implementation of this project, not only the settings experience becomes better, but also set an example for other types of inconsistencies across applications (such as notifications, alerts) to inspire from and apply a similar process.

 

Discovery & Research

 
 

1 . Current State Sweep

 

I did a sweep across the top applications on the Terminal and looked at how they handled their settings (where is the settings entry point, what is the overall navigation, what components are they using to change settings, what semantic language are they using, does the user have to hit “save” or is it auto-saved, etc).

 
 
 

2 . Client Data

I searched for all client tickets related to settings (1yr data), and analyzed 3 things:

 

  1. Amount of time the “Help Desk” department spends in client tickets related to settings.

  2. Impact that this project would have on reducing overall client complaints, time and resources spent, and how investing in this project could be profitable for Bloomberg.

  3. Question types that clients asked about settings (“where do I change…”, “how do I set a default…”, “is there a setting for…”)

 
 
 

3 . Pitch

I created a presentation for my managers showing my analysis on the current situation and the impact that this project could have in clients, Help Desk department, Application Teams (designers and engineers), and overall Terminal modernization

 
 

users & Personas

 
 
 
 
 

user journey

 
 

After several interviews and demos, I took my notes and grouped them by each sequential step needed for a transaction. I had a session with stakeholders to review the content captured, as well as to add on top of my notes in Miro. The stakeholders were impressed with this tool, and were very collaborative. They added great ideas, filled in the steps that were missing information, and really gave them a detailed view of their existing workflow, which they never had visually seen in this way. It effectively made them realize the gaps and opportunities of their application with our guide and support.

 
 
 

As part of our initial deliverable, we put together a very detailed, high fidelity user journey mapping it to each user persona, and how those personas connected with each other.

 
 
 

ideation & sketching

 
 

mockups