Ontario Land Tribunal website redesign
Ontario Digital Service case study
ROLE
Jurisdictional analysis
Affinity mapping
Stakeholder communication
Design thinking
Prototyping
Usability testing
TEAM
4 product designers
1 project manager
DURATION
June 2021 - August 2021
Please note that the work conducted in this case study is preliminary, and the government has made no commitment to the creation of this product.
The work done in this case study is a part of my Summer 2021 internship at the
Ontario Digital Service, a digital service office within the Government of Ontario which aims to rethink how online services are designed and make them faster, clearer and simpler for people. During my time there, I was a Product Design and User Research Intern in the Experience Design Chapter.
Problem
In order to design a new website for the Ontario Land Tribunal, my team and I were brought in to conduct discovery work to determine user pain points, as well as make recommendations on what could be improved for the new site.
The Ontario Land Tribunal website encounters about 3000 new users a month, but is found to be vastly confusing due to recent legislative changes and a lack of tested information architecture.
Existing design
New design
Understanding the project
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT GOVERNMENT
The reason this project was started was because the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT), Environmental Review Tribunal (ERO), Board of Negotiation (BON), Conservation Review Board (CRB), and the Mining and Lands Tribunal (MLT) were merged into a single entity called the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT).
Due to this, the OLT put together a quickly constructed website which is loaded with too much information. As a part of this project we were working with the Ontario Land Tribunals Business and Communication Team under the Ministry of the Attorney General to redesign their current website.
Redesigning the site allowed us to examine and iterate on both OLT's online and offline processes. The website is a medium of communication for information such as case status and hearing dates. Due to this, it was important to ensure that any bottlenecks in the process of uploading the information that could cause a delay in providing it to the end users were either resolved or clearly communicated.
WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
We laid out the current site flows that users were using to best understand the problem space we would be tackling, as well as the users we would be talking to
We started off the project by setting out expectations, scoping out what needed to be done, and discussing what status the current website was at. During this process, we identified what changes had been made based on the amalgamation and understood what the OLT team assumed to be the main goal of the website.
We also identified the key user groups based on the analytics the OLT team currently had.
In order to better understand the functionalities of the current website, we went mapped out the three main flows users were going through (below).
Current user flow of the website - click image to expand
Based on this we were able to get a clearer understanding of who would be using the website, and the key areas of the website that were often accessed.
PROJECT CONSTRAINT
After coming to a preliminary understanding of the project scope, we decided to conduct user research sessions with lawyers, planning professionals, municipal workers, and homeowners.
However, the OLT team mentioned that they were against compensation due to a possibility of being seen as partial in a case outcome.
While we understood where they were coming from, it was imperative for us to compensate users, especially those from the general public in order to get a diverse range of participants. After spending various meeting sessions discussing the importance of inclusivity and accessibility within our research and communicating this to the Ministry of the Attorney General, we were able to set out very clear guidelines on which participant types would and would not receive compensation.
Interviews and analysis
As a team we conducted 10 interviews with 4 law professionals, 1 planning professional, 3 home owners, and 2 municipal workers.
In order to better understand the problem, we did the following as our analysis:
Created affinity maps based on key user quotes to create a problem statement
Identified jobs to be done and UI issues
Made empathy maps to understand pain points
Defined multiple user journeys to understand the holistic process
Participants were from a variety of locations and age groups. However we did not have many participants representing different accessibility needs. We also aimed for diversity in the following:
OLT knowledge and engagement
Previous inquiries done with the OLT
Website experience in the past
Some limitations to consider were that participants could also have already interacted with another version of the site previously, which could bias their preferences or thoughts, and that some participants may assume their feedback will impact the OLT’s decision on a case.
COMING TO CONCLUSIONS
After completing all the interviews we wrote down the main pain points from each user interview to understand the commonalities between the various participants, and what was repeated. If a specific comment or concern was repeated across multiple users, we made sure to note it down as a key problem that hindered the user experience.
We then combined the recurring user quotes for each user group into affinity maps, as well as identified the main uses they had for the website.
One of four affinity maps created to analyze each user type - click image to expand
Identifying the problem statement
Based off of this we identified the key problem statement to be:
The current Ontario Land Tribunal’s website is not meeting user needs, which has resulted in increased workflow time, inefficient use of resources, and users feeling an overall lack of care from the Tribunal.
Our goal as a team was to:
Create a one-stop shop where users would be able to easily find access and edit the information they needed, and feel as though they were being supported throughout the entire process.
EMPATHY MAPPING
Following this, we created an empathy map for each user group, which helped us separate the key insights into pains, gains, and actions that are completed. This gave us a better understanding of the key tasks each page was used for by each user group and their intended outcomes.
From the empathy maps we noted the key jobs to be done which connected the tasks to the current website workflow and UI issues present which were presented to the stakeholders as ‘easy fixes’ for them to tackle.
🖱️ Click an image to open a full screen view
USER JOURNEYS
In order to consolidate all of this, we created user journeys (below) for key areas of navigation and laid out the users who went through this process, steps to perform the action, barriers currently present, and what is important to successfully get to the desired outcome. This helped us create a cohesive understanding of where the problem areas laid, how they were encountered, and what the intended goals of the actions were.
Doing this allowed us to isolate key problems, ideate improvements, and come up with new functionalities which would provide a better solution for the user’s needs.
🖱️ Click the image to open a full screen view
What we found and what it meant
Our recommendations were broken down into nine categories based on the various parts of the website, but focused on the overall information architecture, E-Services (Calendar, Status, Decisions), content reframing, improving accessibility, and embedding changes in the offline process.
ASSUMPTIONS
An assumption we made in our recommendations was that users would know what tribunal their case was filed under, and some basic information to identify their individual case (appellant name, defendant name, location, etc.). We also assumed that the information presented on the website would be timely, and up-to-date from all of the municipal and provincial offices involved.
CONSTRAINTS
A constraint that we faced was that the large amount of information posted on the website (various versions of laws, forms, etc.) cannot be saved on the database. Due to this, it became important to clearly identify when external links would be leading the user to a different page and what actions could be completed on the next page.
KEY FINDING 1
Users have difficulty locating their case due to the large number of open and closed cases present, with very limited searching capacities.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CASE SEARCH
Allow for increased searching options beyond just the case file number
Add a filtering functionality for year and tribunal type
Reorder cases to show open cases first
Allow users to sign up to receive email notifications for updates on a case
Improve the municipality selection option with a type-ahead search
Change file naming and description conventions to make them more descriptive following industry standards
KEY FINDING 2
Users do not have enough accurate information being shown in a timely manner to determine what availabilities there are in the calendar.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CALENDAR
Consolidate the case dates for all the tribunals into one calendar to ensure all the information is kept up to date
Follow the Apple/Google Calendar standard of display to increase readability and reduce interactions required
Evaluate the offline process to understand where there are bottlenecks in scheduling
Provide clarity on what dates are available for booking
KEY FINDING 3
Hyperlinks and headings are identical in forms and users can only differentiate between the two using hover state which is not available on mobile.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FORMS
Improve the visual hierarchy and formatting of how forms are displayed by following Ontario.ca style guidelines
Create a scannable and searchable table for forms
Clearly indicate the difference between PDF, HTML, and Word documents as well as what each of their functionalities are
KEY FINDING 4
All of the many fees are listed in a long table that makes finding specific information difficult, especially given users’ lack of knowledge regarding the process.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FEES
Implement a better visual hierarchy with grouped components
Allow for an ability to filter or search through different types of fees
Provide pricing based on an interactive model, such as a diagnostic quiz
KEY FINDING 5
Users find it difficult to understand the purpose of each part of the website and how to find important information relevant to them.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HOMEPAGE
Use the homepage to provide users with access to frequently-used content
Improve navigability and discoverability of pages by implementing a single navigation bar with minimal sub-groups
Provide a clearer overview and timeline of the appeals process for those who are unfamiliar with the system
Next steps and key learnings
While this project is now being passed off to the OLT team to work with a vendor, our research will still lay the foundation for major reworkings of the website.
Throughout this project, not only did I learn a lot about discovery research, but also stakeholder communications and leading a project team through a sprint.
PRESENTING NORTH STAR VISIONS
During this project, there were many recommendations that we provided that were not immediately feasible, due to many external factors. While we understood this, it was incredibly important for us to present our visions for what the most user-centric product would look like to decision-making stakeholders.
We made sure that while we presented these North Star visions, we accompanied them with more feasible options of how to address the user needs based on the current constraints in place.
COMPROMISING WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Since this project involved working with another Ministry who had their own set of rules and regulations, it was extremely important that all correspondence to the public was done in a way which met our needs and their standards. I learnt how to communicate the reasoning behind our needs to conduct user research, while also understanding their reasons for hesitation.
Similar to understanding the user's problem with a product, I determined the root cause of the Ministry's hesitation and facilitated a very open working environment with frequent checkpoints where the stakeholder team could bring up any concerns they had.
HOW OFFLINE CHANGES IMPACT ONLINE PROCESSES
We realized quite quickly during this project that the improvement of the online process was very closely tied with much needed improvements to the holistic offline process. During many of the user interviews, participants mentioned that they used the website as their primary means of communication from the overall Tribunal body. Facilitating a slow-moving offline process into an online medium, meant that the resultant product would also be slow-moving.
To resolve this, I delved into the problem area to understand what offline processes could be improved in our recommendations. We provided this, along with the impacts it would have on making an overall user-centric solution.
