✦ My Selected Works
✻ Personal Notes
This project holds special significance for me as I led the end-to-end design process from its inception, wearing multiple hats as designer, strategist and researcher. The experience pushed me out of my comfort zone, involving negotiation with high-level stakeholders, team management, and conducting on-site pilot testing for 300 users.
Role : Senior Product Designer
Team Collaborator : Researcher, Copywriter, Product Managers, Engineers, Marketing, Data, Policy & Regulation team
Contribution : Conducting research (creating research plan, in-depth interview, heuristic analysis, synthesizing, analyzing and building report), concepting (low-fidelity), designing (high fidelity screens), leading & facilitating workshops, conducting usability tests
Company : GovTech Edu
Context
Things you need to know about Indonesian school administrative system
Since 2005, schools in Indonesia have been entitled to receive government-aided funds annually to help meet their daily needs. Schools that receive this fund must create a detailed plan and report to justify their spending. From the preliminary research, we found that teachers often take on dual roles to carry out this administrative task, which obstructs their classroom teaching time.
The Issues
How I contributed in identifying the issue?
After the preliminary research, I executed an online interview with some school staffs to deep dive into their administrative process. It turned out that schools were equipped with a financial management platform for report creation. However, it's still not easy to comprehend. Some schools even had to give up because it was too complicated. With this in mind, I aim to alleviate their burden by making the financial management process more bearable and friendly for all teachers, so they can allocate more time to classroom activities. Given these circumstances, I conducted workshop to spearhead a heuristic analysis on the preexisting platform to identify the issues. I worked with other designers, product managers and policy regulation team to map out the journey and point out potential areas for improvement by identifying its strengths and weaknesses.
From our analysis, we found a lot of different issues in the platform. To make it more actionable and fit the existing timeline, I sorted each issue into various categories and created a simple diagram to prioritize them. This formed our proposal to external stakeholders, indicating which user journey had the most challenges and needed immediate attention. Our proposal was later accepted, signifying the official commencement of this project.
After the focus area was cleared, I crafted the design principles and used them as a north star for the product and design team to define the feature enhancements. I used the research insights, took the user pain points and goals as a foundation to craft this principles. The design principles are divided into two: the satisfiers (principles that apply exclusively to this product) and the basic principles (principles commonly used across digital products). Later on, these principles were also used by the marketing team to promote the urgency of this new version to schools.
Final Design
After locking the design principles, here’s what I did to act on that ..
I led the total design revamp of the preexisting digital platform into a more user-friendly interface and efficient flow. I started with low-fidelity sketches in Miro and turned them into a well-crafted high fidelity design in Figma. Even after finalizing the concept and moving it to Figma, we still went through numerous iterations, received feedback, and conducted testing before finally wrapping up the final design.
Before
After
Behind The Scene
Just a quick glimpse of our behind the scene process that most people do not realize happening
I didn't jump directly into Figma when it came to designing concepts. I prefer to use Miro for low-fidelity sketches as it allows me to ideate freely without worrying about pixels initially. After we established the design principles, I began mapping the new user journey and sketching alternative concepts in Miro. Throughout the design process, I conducted multiple workshops and design critiques with other cross-functional teams to receive early feedback. It's challenging to capture all feedback at once, so I divided the feedback sessions into several events and iterated on the design (while still being mindful of the timeline). Aside from that, I made my workspace accessible and easy to navigate for both tech and non-tech individuals.
We conducted multiple tests with users. I led the testing sessions, both online and offline, with the help of other members. We experienced from small (5 users) to large scale pilot testing (300 users), each with its pros, cons and learnings. Multiple tests were necessary due to the complexity of our product, which involved numerous user journeys. While some feedbacks were harsh and occasionally met with backlash, this was an essential part of the process, enabling us to iterate continuously and mitigate significant risks before the final release. During the interview/testing process, I also encouraged non-designers to join and help me take notes. This provided a great opportunity for non-designers to build empathy with the users.
Outcomes
What our team achieve at the end?
After numerous iterations, tests, and several MVP changes, this product was finally launched on August 7 2023, to +400,000 schools in Indonesia.
Challenges
Things weren’t easy for me, I encountered some challenges during the process (but we all made it anyway)..
There’s no similar platform out there. Unlike e-commerce or ride-hailing, we’re working on a niche platform with which none of us were familiar. I didn’t have an ideal benchmark, so I had to experiment a lot and conduct multiple tests.
Complex regulation and business processes to comply with. Dealing with financial documents involves many restrictions and rigid rules. I must understand the process and work on many edge cases that are difficult to identify beforehand. Therefore, I always make sure there's a buffer time in the timeline as the work can evolve anytime.
Getting buy-ins from government stakeholders is never easy. Government officials here tend to have a more conservative mindset. They’re unfamiliar with a human-centric mindset, and I must allocate more time to negotiate and align on minor improvements. Most of the time, it's best to involve them in co-creation process to accelerate the discussions.
Dealing with government platforms means dealing with a messy ecosystem. The data are all scattered, there is no proper documentation, and the infrastructure isn’t built for scalability. The engineers had to start from scratch, go through trial and error, and fix things before we could finally develop with ease. This means that I have to allocate some time in the beginning to create a solid documentation before jumping into the design.
Resources were limited, and switching context is another challenge. As the designer who understands the context, I have to be flexible with my job scope to fill in the gaps. Sometimes I help double-check marketing content and other times I support the product team to educate the engineers about the context. If I want to add more resources, I need to be considerate as I realize that passing on all these heavy contexts will take time, and the team is running out of it.
Main Takeaways
This project has taught me a lot, and these are the two main takeaways which affect me personally as a person..
Never be too emotionally invested in your product. Never take any fallback personally and be ready to bounce back.
I experienced a lot of ups and downs during the process. My work made me feel good about myself, but it would easily make me feel bad too when things went south. I used to blame myself when things weren’t as expected, but I realized how this situation hindered me from moving forward. I know I’ve done my best, and only when I tried to detach my emotion from my work could I see everything more objectively. Even when something terrible happens, now I can embrace it and see it as an opportunity for the team to reflect so we can bounce back quickly and better.
Trust your teammates and always have each other’s back. Sometimes you have to let go of your perfectionism to help others grow.
I used to be an Individual Contributor, so when I finally got my chance to manage others, things might have gotten a little scary. I wasn’t accustomed to delegating work, and encountering a different working style gave me a little turbulence. But then I learned that if I wanted to grow this product, I had to nurture the team and make the work scalable. I learned to step back a little and give space for my subordinates to figure things out. My job is not always to keep things right but to help others learn, even if they have to make mistakes first.
✦ Team Credits
This project couldn't have been completed without the contributions of these fantastic individuals. Special thanks go to Lody Andrian (Design Lead) for entrusting me with this project and being patient with my rants. Appreciation is also due for Atika Sulistyan, Ayu Temenggung, and Diodona (Writer, Researcher, Junior Designer), who provided significant contributions, cooperation, and endless support.
Yulita Astriani (Product Manager) is among the wisest people with whom I've had the pleasure to work. Thanks for being a great partner in overcoming project challenges. Kudos to Yasmin Ghassani, Taufik, Retha, Irma, Arno, Badger, Hisyam, and others (Engineers & QA) for exceeding their roles and providing valuable feedback to identify edge cases.
Tasha Nastiti (Policy Team), your assistance was invaluable for our smooth collaboration with external parties. Special thanks to Bunga, Tyas, Lala, Sonnia, and others (Central Marketing) for helping with the onboarding materials. Ratih and Pasga (Data Team), your help with analysis and target samples was instrumental. And to the rest of the team, whose names I can't mention individually, you are all amazing!