Neontribe

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Neontribe

I have chosen to partake in my first work experience placement at a local UX company, Neontribe. I was interested to apply for this role due to their inspirational presentation at NUA during my time in Year 1. I enjoyed the energy that Harry and Rupert displayed and they taught me a lot about user personas, stories, and journeys. I believe that this has partly contributed to how my special interest in these areas of user experience research and design. I can see myself growing into a knowledgeable user researcher.

Neontribe is comprised of a small team of around 15 developers, designers, and researchers. I feel more comfortable starting off with a company of this size because of my past experiences with small and large organisations. Whilst larger companies commonly deal with larger clients/projects, and can lead to extremely big and exciting opportunities, it is easy to get lost in the shadow of more experienced professionals. It is good to challenge myself but I don’t want to feel overwhelmed and disheartened. Neontribe’s intimately sized team offers a nice jumping off point to better my skills and experience whilst still being able to know the names of the people of who to ask for help.

Day 1

Tuesday 27th November 2018

Upon arrival I met one of the web developers, Alex, and she briefly introduced to some of the team. Due to their flexible working hours policy, not everyone was in the office this day. I assume I will be meeting the rest of the team over the course of the week. Alex then showed me through some pending and completed projects, giving me insight into how they work and operate as a user experience design company. These projects included:

  1. Mind Of My Own – An online service for those in care to have a platform to communicate with their care workers etc, regarding their thoughts and feelings, albeit good or bad.
  2. Rose Vouchers – The digitalisation of food coupons for families. Users can store, search and claim food vouchers to spend at their local shops/market.

After this short introduction, I sat with two girls, Holly and Steph, to paper prototype the company’s new website. This exercise was completely up my street and made me feel like I was in my element. I was familiar with the process as well as having an idea of what should come out of this session. In the beginning, I sat back and listened to the girls’ discussion and took in all the information I could. I wasn’t lost with terminology, process, or with the techniques they were using. This lead to me being able to contribute knowledgeably when the time came and my input was taken on board and even included in some of the iterative prototypes, ready for presentation to the team. I believe that my input and ideas were valuable to the session.

We primarily ran through the opportunities page, which is listed to include:

  • Vacancies
  • Information for interns/work experience
  • How to apply (or link to this if it is on an external page)
  • Some stories about how folk came to work here
  • Some impressions of what it is like to work here
  • Work culture
  • Our approach to training and engagement (e.g. Codebar, a coding group for minority groups)
  • Conferences/Events (Not confirmed)

The girls had already covered a majority of these so we ran over different elements to either confirm or adapt them to new ideas. After brainstorming for a few hours, we came to agree on this iteration of design choices:

  • Want to work with us? – Copy at the top of the page including a short introduction to life at Neontribe. Information about how to apply.
  • Benefits and Perks – Include three serious and three fun. This helps the company avoid the ‘all work, no play’ look. The icons for these may look best in simple, stand-alone, vector icons.
  • Vacancies – Display these in a format that is easy to edit because job availability fluctuates. If there is nothing available, filler text can be added. The icons for this may look best in hexagons, this will help them to attract more attention from browsing users.
  • Employee statement – A short piece of text from contributing employees, preferably a member from each department, stating their favourite thing about working at Neontribe. This will change on a timer or whenever the page is refreshed. This aims to increase diversity and appeal to a wider audience. (Someone looking for a job in development may be a lot more interested in the thoughts of a programmer than that of a content manager.)
  • Team Photo – A team photo at the bottom is a good way to round of the page and give visitors a feel of the company’s employees. Including the e-mail address at the bottom of this section also gives users a faster alternative to scrolling back up the page.

When working on creative projects, I regularly find myself dreaming up new ideas when I’m having my dinner at home or out having some food. Due to my brain not being able to switch off sometimes, here are some further ideas I have had outside of working hours:

  • The icons in benefits and perks could be clickable to reveal more information or animate when hovered over to add an extra layer to the user experience.
  • The job vacancies could include two call-to-actions. “Quick Apply” and “Find Out More”. This allows users who have read already read the descriptions to skip this step and start their application.

For the rest of the day, I performed market research on how other design companies displayed their “Projects” pages. I found that most display them in a grid layout. This could either be because it’s the easiest way for mobile accessibility or genuinely because they like it. We, personally, think it looks samey and if not executed correctly, can be confusing if there are too many images and pieces of text floating around the page. From this, I mocked up some ideas using pen and paper.

First iteration of a ‘Projects’ or ‘Our Work’ page.

  • Images of the project’s corresponding company logo in hexagon shapes to stay on brand.
  • Hexagons would include name of project/name of company and possibly a “Read More” button, if it doesn’t look too cluttered.
  • Additional logos underneath in an “Other Companies” section. These could be arranged by sector e.g. charity, corporate.

The second iteration of a “Projects” or “Our Work” page

  • The introductory paragraph to the left of the projects carousel. The carousel is controlled by a tab system at the top organised by theme e.g. charity, corporate.
  • When the user clicks on a project, the placeholder below replaces with a short introduction to an article that goes into more depth with process etc.
  • Awards section?
  • An “Other charities” carousel.
  • Testimonials? I fear this may make the page look to crowded, though. Maybe the positive work with clients and pushing of well-known logos is enough to encourage trust from potential clients.
  • Contact details at the bottom for easy access.

Some brief UI ideas for logo presentation

A quick UI sketch of design elements inside an “Awards” section.

  • A roughly-sketched selection of potential award icons that could be used.
  • Clients carousel.
  • Contact section.

This was a nice, relaxed way to end the day. I had learnt a lot and it was useful to spend some time digesting the new tips and tricks I had learnt. My first day at Neontribe was positively informative.

Day 2

Wednesday 28th November 2018

This morning I was introduced to Trello, a project management site where projects are created and employees on board can share their progress and thoughts in the form of text and images. Information can be displayed on boards, inside of tickets and can feature things like checklists and labels. These can be created and edited by project members.

Neontribe’s Trello board for their new website organised by theme and priority

All the employees at Neontribe are familiar with this software and contribute actively to project boards. I was invited in and could see all the activity for the “Neontribe website”. Information is sorted into tickets, which is essentially used for task management. Ticket headers include “User Personas”, “Research Results” and even timelines such as “Pending”, “Awaiting Review” and “Completed”. I was impressed by their organisational skills.

A card on the ticket titles “User Stories”

I haven’t been part of or used any project management software before, so this was an exciting new experience for me. It was helpful to see tasks organised using headers and colour coding and how employees have the freedom to add their notes, comments or own tickets.

My brief for the day was “Navigate the current website with aims created for the new version to identify key pain points. Record the User Journeys in Real Time Board.”

Firstly I read through the six user personas the team had created from user research sessions. I am unsure of the exact processes they undertook to come to these results, but I assume interviews were performed either with employees or external users. It took me quite a while to read through these due to my reading difficulties, which was extremely frustrating, but I persevered and was intrigued by the style in which these were created.

Neontribe’s Google document of user personas

I like the template of subjects covered on the user persona cards. I believe the questions at the bottom are common practice and it’s really nice to see them used in a professional setting. It put the exercise into perspective and laid out the information in an easy-to-consume way.

Neontribe’s Google document of user statements

This part, however, undoubtedly took my interest. This technique worked very well for me to create a clear picture in my mind about the goals to be achieved. It could also shed light on new pain points for user experience designers to analyse that the interviewee may not have specifically touched on. I will definitely be using this research method in future.

I was then introduced to the free mind-mapping software they use, Real Time Board, and quickly started to enjoy using this new piece of kit. It’s easy to use, intuitive and legible. A user experience delight (apart from the lack of version control). I was excited to start creating some user journeys.

I started off with Shaii’s user journey. Her story is “As Shaii, I want to see a culture that supports individuality so that I know what I will be able to fit in”.

Shaii’s user journey board

Brian’s user story is “As Brian, I want to understand the process Neontribe use to deliver projects so that I feel confident they can deliver on our project”.

Brian’s user journey board

In total, this task took up most of my day. The whole process was quite time consuming as it was my first time creating user journeys in a professional setting. Taking time to be actively aware of the techniques I was using and applying from research performed at Uni and my own instincts was an arduous task. I didn’t just want to complete the task in hand, I wanted to benefit from it and I am confident I achieved this. I learnt:

  • Colour coding is really helpful to differentiate between action, desire, feeling, thought, pain point and positive point.
  • Don’t think of the user story as a brief, think of it as an idea that can be executed in any way as long as there is always that final aim in mind. This opens up the journeys A LOT more. I felt like I was straying off when in actual fact I was performing a task from a users perspective and distractions are entirely possible.
  • I should write down my ideas on paper first. I found it difficult to type it straight into the software because I would spend time inserting post-its and making typos and stray away from my initial idea.
  • It’s good to jot down paint points AND positive points. Even if the positive points aren’t executed to their entirety in other iterations, it is good to note where design choices have worked.
  • Attention to detail greatly pays off. Every piece of information helps put the reader into the user’s position.

I enjoyed my second day at Neontribe, improving upon and applying skills I had learnt in during my University course. This experience put me in a positive mindset for future projects involving these skills.

Day 3

Thursday 29th November 2018

Today was off to a slow start due a lot of employees being tied up with prior engagements. Therefore, I spent some time doing some blog writing.

Later on in the morning, I was officially introduced to Addaction. Addaction is a charity run online service for people going through substance abuse with intoxicants ranging from alcohol to heroin. The charity already has a LiveChat system integrated into their website for users to talk to the workers about topics such as if they feel in crisis or need a telephone number for a local service to them (Addaction is available nationwide).

This particular ChatBot that Neontribe are currently building is an out-of-hours service, designed to give users a help portal when workers are not available to chat immediately. Users are still able to leave a message for someone to pick up in the morning but in the mean time, they are given the opportunity to read stories, check availability times to talk to a worker and set up a referral with a support service. I was informed of two very interesting points that came from the research sessions that are worth noting:

  1. People going through tough times are most likely to reach out because they feel lonely in their depressive state of sitting in front of the TV or browsing the web. They are in a lucid state of involvement with their depression and will be in-between coping and crisis. This is the time when users will most likely be involved with the out-of-hours ChatBot and should be catered accordingly.
  2. Users showed that one of the main components of the service should be the ability to read through stories of others recovering from similar experiences. This means that the ChatBot should give users the ability to choose from multiples stories covering multiple topics to cater to a wider audience.

Being fully briefed on the project, I was now able to involve myself further. I was invited to spend the afternoon with Karl, usability testing the Chatbot. I knew enough to test the service, but a lot of my comments were coming from an uneducated background. By this, during the usability testing, I was suggesting improvements and noticing pitfalls without knowing technological scope and what information came from the user research sessions. A few of these included:

  • I did not learn until later on in the afternoon that they are using a framework with very limited capabilities, so incorporating certain elements is a lot tricker than expected.
  • According to research, users preferred to not use radio buttons and tick boxes as part of an initial assessment.
  • The interface could not be adapted or changed at all to suit this particular need so no extra ‘soft’ panic buttons could be added outside of the chat interface.

I performed tests on Microsoft Edge (desktop), Google Chrome (desktop), iOS 12 Safari (mobile) and iOS 12 Chrome (mobile). Below are some screeshots including one of the issues I found. In this particular case, the ChatBot was not able to figure out whether I was inputting a name, e-mail address or postcode, so I could input anything I liked. This is not ideal for a service where workers are supposed to refer a patient using these specific details.

Screenshot 1: iOS 12 Chrome usability test

Screenshot 2: iOS 12 Chrome usability test

Screenshot 3: iOS 12 Chrome usability test

On the whole, the experience worked well and I made a note of things that weren’t so smooth. I thoroughly enjoyed usability testing a real-life product and have had my eyes opened to the intricate, frustrating and exciting world of ChatBots.

Day 4

Friday 30th November 2018

This morning, one of my colleagues, Kat, informed me that I was to present the user stories I had created for the new website. I was not expecting this task so, naturally, I was feeling quite nervous, particularly, about what employees at Neontribe would think of my work. I then thought to myself, “if Kat wants me to present it, I must be doing something right!”. We gathered in the boardroom and I talked through the ideas of Shaii and Brian, the user personas used for the journeys.

The presentation went well and was a lot less intimidating than expecting. Everyone listened politely and it was in a relaxed setting, so presenting my thoughts went smoothly. Harry seemed impressed with my work so this was a great confidence boost as well.

“We asked Naomi to run a persons through a user journey on our own website. Her analysis was compellingly user-centred and extremely acute.” (Harrold, 2018)

Following this, a few members from each department came together to perform a card sorting exercise for content placement on the new website. The exercise ran in the following order:

  1. User statements from the Trello board (the 8 most highly voted) were written on large pieces of paper and post-it notes were placed on each, referring to actions that the user may want to perform to complete this user journey.
  2. Dummy pages were created from previous knowledge and user stories.
  3. The card sorting exercise started and because it is the companies website, for this stage of prototyping, the staff were acting as potential users.
  4. Post-it notes from the user stories were placed on the dummy pages to create a first iteration of which pages were to be included and what content they feature.
  5. It was easier now that the content was given some context. Another iteration was created so that when these are shown to other employees, they can look at one, the other or both and either fuse ideas or act from inspiration and come up with new ones.

I liked this session a lot because I performed a card sorting session myself for a menu system I created for The Greenhouse Trust website. I could see techniques that I applied in Year 1 in their infancy setting a stage for some really innovative ideas about how the whole website should look, feel and act.

During the second half of the day, I was given the pleasure of analysing some data gathered from the ChatBot with Rose. I usually dislike analysing data, but this session was particularly interesting because of the nature of the results.

We were looking at how people got on with using the ChatBot and how the service is being accessed and used in the real world. The link was given to a care-worker at Addaction, Steph, who would ask users to have a look at the ChatBot after their session. The results shed a lot of light on existing issues and even birthed some new ones. Some of out findings were:

  • Users mostly abandoned the chat when they had received what they wanted (e.g. they ask for a phone number, Steph provides them with it, suggests they use the Bot and then they abandon)
  • Some users abandoned the task after using he service for a few minutes; is the service too much like a robot? Do users feel like they have been palmed off on a robot?
  • Steph may not be promoting the service well with the use of canned response. Due to the nature of the work, each case is different and could benefit from its own introduction.

Conclusion

My time at Neontribe was fantastic and has given me the confidence boost I need to believe in my skills as a UX Designer. Due to the course having so little people and the industry still being young, there are a lot of grey areas about what is achievable in what time, in the case of both my University work and in the real-world. Being part of an active design team showed myself and them that my skills are developing well and I am excited for my career.