Trello Feature Request
Cognitive Walkthrough
Contextual Inquiry
Prototyping
Technology developers have daily challenges to stay abreast of the ever changing demands of their projects. Each developer plays a key role in the success of the project. Many teams utilize the Agile Methodology for executing their projects. Durning an Agile project, the team meets daily in a Stand-Up meeting. Each team member quickly debriefs their team with what they are working on, issues their are experiencing and what they have done.
The Challenge
The challenge still existed for the Stand-Up meeting. Developers were attending with notebooks, post it notes and white board scratches depicting their current status of the project. Remote users could not quickly access this information.
By better understanding the developers and their needs, could a feature request to Trello provide developers a tool that is better than paper?
Trello, a flexible, easy to use project management tool, keeps track of everything from the big picture to the minute details. Trello is a free visual collaboration platform that connects the team, keeping the project flowing. The data visualization platform of Trello is a key success of the tool.
The Journey
Cognitive Walkthrough
I completed a cognitive walkthrough of Trello focusing on 5 actions (create a board, create a card, edit a card, add a file, and add resources). The walkthrough provided me an understanding of Trello's learnability for a new or infrequent user. The criteria evaluated were:
Thought process of how the Trello is used
Visibility of Trello's content for clarity
Consistency of Trello's interface system
Feedback Trello provides to the users when interacting with the program
Contextual Inquiry
Myself and a team of UX designers set out to the field to interview and observe developers performing their work, what tools they used and who they were working with (task analysis). The group compilation of data was quickly synthesized to help develop insight on what is meaningful to developers.
The key insights I discovered were:
Developers referenced the shared project management tool (Trello, JIRA) but kept their own personal notes in notebooks or on post-it notes. The notes were commonly the at a glance details of the daily Stand-Up.
Developers are frequently working remotely, increasing the need to share information and status electronically.
Smaller start up companies or individual consultants do not have the capital to invest in feature rich project management software.
My concept to develop a dashboard feature for Trello provides a solution to the key insights. Users can
The Strategy
Based upon my evaluation of the research, the findings easily provided a defined goal:
Provide a prototype of Trello for small (4-17 people) consultative tech companies. The prototype will integrate an added feature integrating enhanced capabilities for Sprints captivating benefits of the data visualization speed of the human brain.
Conclusion
Observing and understanding the contextual environment of the developers elevated the my design solution. The design solution had its constraints of abiding to Trello's well documented style guide. It was a great opportunity for me to work with an existing product and style guide. My proposed usability enhancement must stay true to Trello's brand and engage the user group, the developers. The dashboard solution is not isolated to developers specific needs, it can be integrated into the daily needs for all professional and personal applications. Ultimately solving for a greater population and enhancing the users experience.