DMV clerks needed a way of tracking lay personnel, volunteers, and paid translators for non-English speaking drivers.
The K2D Translator plugin would be used mainly by DMV clerks.
Clerks needed to see all translators and their availability statuses while editing individual translator profiles.
Some translators spoke multiple languages, allowing them to assist multiple test takers.
DMV managers needed the ability to print reports for tests that translators assisted with to detect and prevent fraud.
DMV managers needed insight into who had made changes to each translator profile, and when, to prevent errors.
Translator pioneered the way for K2D plugins. As the first of its kind, the team overcame many hurdles - learning from mistakes and growing in the process.
Developers rarely have the time to analyze a working Figma prototype for interaction nuances (i.e. hover states, focus states, loading triggers, etc.), especially during Agile sprint weeks. Thus, they tend to rely on static mockups. To a UX/UI designer, some interaction nuances seem quite obvious, however not all developers have the bandwidth to read between the lines of a design file. To avoid future QA setbacks and minimize the time spent on UX/Dev reviews, I created a color-coded annotation system catered for UX/UI, Dev, QA, and BAs. This implementation drastically improved clarity and collaboration in a cross-functional team setting. My next project, PayFac, had incredibly few cosmetic bugs and UX/Dev reviews as a result.
Sometimes, UX/UI designers receive projects that are already in the pipeline. When I took over Translator, the needs assessment was done, the wireframes were done, and the initial designs were done. But, they were wrong, and I had to start from scratch. Talk about design debt...
Backend developers were my main source of research for this project. Thus, my initial understanding was overly technical. For example, a translator's information was never fully deleted from the database, only "soft" deleted. This overly technical understanding led to ambiguous design decisions that needed to be remedied later on. The terms were so ambiguous, that UX, BA, and even front-end devs had a difficult time keeping the functionality straight. Talk about even more design debt...
Users were having a hard time associating "Renew" with "Expired"
The audit could not distinguish between a inactive and expired translators that were renewed by a user
Users had difficulty associating the "x" with the old suspend icon
Switching to the lock remedied this
Users had difficulty associating the "remove" with "available"
It was not clear that the user was removing or restoring a translator's availability to the K2D database
Cognitive load is a real thing. The less a user has to think, the faster they can complete the task at hand. Just because a word makes technical sense on the backend, does not mean it makes sense on the front end with end users. I learned the importance of speaking on behalf of the end user, often easier said than done. I also learned how to take a step back, logically evaluate my own designs, and implement changes in a fast-paced environment.