product design
LifeRaftInc
Notifications Center
Developing a notification center for LifeRaftInc's OSINT platform "Navigator" to improve user collaboration and workflows.
Background
During the summer of 2023, I joined the LifeRaftInc team as a design intern and was approached with the opportunity to create a notification center for their OSINT platform Navigator, as they were unsatisfied with its current implementation.
I worked in a team alongside Evelyn Da Sylva, a product manager at LifeRaftInc. I was responsible for user and UX research, providing prototype walkthroughs for user testing, and design requirement documents. We communicated with stakeholders regarding design decisions, ensuring they were always updated of the team’s status.
Problem
Navigator is a platform that utilizes OSINT tools to provide businesses cybersecurity protection services by collecting, aggregating, and monitoring potential threat actors by searching through multiple online sources. Users are then notified of the task statuses and updates from these services.
However, many users voiced their frustrations with the current notifications system as there is no in-platform system to house these notifications, leading to issues with workflow disruption and missed updates between collaborators.
Challenge
How might we create an in-platform notification center that allows for more organized workflows and collaboration between our users?
Overview
We were provided an overview of the problem from senior management to understand the primary issues that users are facing with notifications.
*Images have been recreated and modified to emulate the notifications and do not represent the acutal platform.
While the user is already in-platform, they are notified via toast messages. Toast messages are temporary and can be missed if the user is not paying attention.
When a user is logged out of the platform, notifications will continue to come in. Upon logging back in, notifications come in all at once and must be closed by clicking in or waiting for them to disappear.
Primary Research
To understand our user’s thoughts and behaviors about the current notification system, we conducted user interviews to understand what the user’s day-to-day challenges were regarding the notification system and what they valued when being notified. We spoke with a broad range of internal users of the platform- from engineers and marketers to product specialists, the latter of which also provided insights on our customers.
Insights
Different users value different types of notifications
Users may receive high volumes of notifications leading them to ignore certain notifications due to how frequent they are. Notifications that may be useful to one user may not be as valuable to another.
Notifications should improve workflows, not impede them.
Some users found notifications to be a source of disruption, making it difficult for users to maintain workflows. In its current implementation, clicking to check a notification takes a user out of their workflow into a new page.
Too much noise in and out of platform
Users found it difficult to differentiate different types of notifications and alerts due to the amount of clutter that appears on screen. Additionally, many of these notifications also get sent to their emails, leading to flooded inboxes.
Design
Requirements
After reviewing and gaining insights from research as a team, we moved on to evaluating the feature set for the MVP requirements. These will determine the intended user flows and system mapping as well as address the key pain points of the users.
Notification Settings
Full control of what notifications are received via toggle on and off types of notifications through email and in-platform.
Message Previews
Previews for collaborative features such as notes and tags to provide more insight and prompt direct action.
Streamlined Workflows
Visual indicators will allow users to quickly identify a notification's type, status, and time of delivery.
Improved Visual Design
The overall visual design of the notifications system was overhauled, leveraging the new design system for more clarity and
User Flow
We mapped out the key user flows we wanted to address while keeping into account potential features. The MVP will focus deciding whether or not a user will receive a notification based on their notification settings. While features such as "do not disturb" and timing notifications were also included in the flow, they fell out scope as further validation from engineering and product teams were needed.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Lo-fi prototypes were created to determine the layout and navigation of the notification center. Various options were tested and iterated upon to ensure a seamless user expierence.
Notification Center
Settings page
High Fidelity Prototype
Once we were satisfied with the lo-fi wireframes, we leveraged the existing design system to create our prototype. We continued to conduct usability tests with both internal and external users to ensure our solution incorporated good design principles while also aligning with the goals of upper management.
*At the time of writing, these do not represent the final designs as the feature has not been released yet.
Next Steps
The next steps would be to test and validate future features planned for the notifications center. There were several features that were cut from the scope of the project due to time constraints. These features would aim to give the user further control of their notifications to improve triaging and filtering.
Lessons Learned
The Value of a Supportive Environment
I was lucky enough to be in a team and environment that supported my growth and career. It was inspiring to work with people not only dedicated to their roles but also incredibly understanding and helped me feel comfortable despite being a fully remote position. Through them, I learned how much care and dedication it takes to succeed in the industry and hope to share the same kindness as I develop as a designer.
Defending Design Decisions.
As this was my first internship as a product designer, I had many moments of inadequacy and imposter syndrome. It was a process to recognize my own value and expertise and take ownership of my work. I learned to embrace challenges to strengthen my design skills and self-confidence.
Collaboration is Key
Being a cross-functional team member is crucial as a designer. I learned how to collaborate effectively with teams of the different perspectives, skills, and contributions and gained new insights. This helped me design more a more well-rounded solution to ensure all aspects are considered to achieve our goals.