Work / Play
Helping federal teams get legal clearance for user research.
Challenge
Approach
Impact
Team
Product Designer
Marina DeFrates
Product Manager
Matt Dobson
Robert Jolly
Strategist
Mike Gintz
Front-End Developer
Natasha Pierre-Louis
Product Designer
Marina DeFrates
Product Manager
Matt Dobson
Robert Jolly
Strategist
Mike Gintz
Front-End Developer
Natasha Pierre-Louis
Context
Federal government
Timeline
Fall 2023 - present
Status
In development
(Launch expected early 2025)
Process
1 / Breaking down a complicated policy
I put my lawyer hat on to sift through dozens of pages of dense legal language to identify when, where and how PRA might affect user research, so I could my attention on those specific parts of the research process.
2/ Researching the researchers
I developed two main goals for the research to help me gain some insight into researchers’ experience with PRA:
Identify the various sources of information teams consult for PRA guidance.
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Discover challenges teams face throughout the entire PRA clearance process.
I wanted to get the perspectives of researchers across different teams, so I put out a call across the organization for those who had recently gone through the PRA clearance process. Many volunteered and I was able to conduct six interviews over the course of a couple weeks.
After talking with researchers, I realized their PRA struggles were even worse than I expected! Based on my research findings, I identified several key takeaways to guide some initial ideation:
PRA guidance is not centralized in a place where researchers can easily find what they need.
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PRA guidance is not tailored to be actionable in the context of small-scale, qualitative user research.
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Figuring out whether PRA clearance is needed is harder than actually getting the clearance.
3/ Defining + designing
Clearly, researchers needed a better way to navigate the PRA clearance process. The question then became, how might we make PRA navigation easier on researchers?
Visualizing the journey (below) helped me pinpoint the most confusing parts of the clearance process and start generating potential solutions. Ideas included a chatbot, "starter kit", handbook documentation, diagram of involved parties, and a fillable form, among others.
Ultimately, my team and I decided to pursue a web-based platform to serve as a flexible, centralized hub that could host many different kinds of resources as the project evolved and would be relatively straightforward to build.
PRA Navigator can help researchers...
Get a definitive answer quickly and easily.
Researchers will be able to determine whether PRA clearance is required, or connect with an official.
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Walk through the process from start to finish.
If researchers need PRA clearance, this tool can help guide them through the process, step by step.
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Become aware of other considerations.
For example, researchers many not know they need separate clearances for recruitment and research.
Centering researchers’ needs
After synthesizing the data from the interviews, I developed a collection of archetypes and user stories to put researchers' needs front and center while defining requirements for the PRA Navigator.
The user story map guided the design of a functional prototype that could meet all the requirements I had defined based on researchers' needs, from first learning about PRA, all the way to getting PRA clearance.
4/ Gathering feedback + garnering support
I volunteered to share the prototype during several different community meetings, reaching hundreds of employees. Not only did I get many volunteer for usability testing, but I also gained the support of key leadership figures who could advocate for this work later on when it comes time for implementation.
I tested the prototype with people in research-adjacent roles who had varying levels of familiarity with PRA to get a wide range of feedback:
In general participants were very enthusiastic about the tool! I synthesized the following pieces of feedback from testing sessions to incorporate into the next iteration of the design:
Design distinct paths for different audiences.
Researchers are coming with different levels of familiarity and experience with PRA, so it's important to meet them where they are.
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Set expectations and indicate progress.
Because researchers perceive the PRA process as something risky to get wrong, it is important that they can be thorough.
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Visually signal trustworthiness.
Researchers generally felt PRA Navigator to be trustworthy but gave additional suggestions, such as using the U.S. Web Design System.
Our testers were excited about the potential of PRA Navigator and helped us spread the word throughout their teams and beyond. Forging these relationships has allowed our larger Research Operations project to become widely known throughout the organization.
Designs
Tailored flows to meet researchers where they’re at
Many researchers shared that they didn't know where to get started with PRA. This section on the homepage not only gives them a place to start but also meets them where they are in terms of their familiarity with PRA and their desired action.
Questionnaires to build confidence
My research indicated that on of the most confusing parts of the PRA process is determining if clearance is needed at all. I designed interactive questionnaires so researchers can determine whether they need clearance or not by answering a series of questions about their research.
Official citations to build trust
Many researchers expressed the desire for plain language PRA information to link to an official citation to increase their levels of trust. I struck a balance between too little and too much information by including carousels that highlight key pieces of relevant legal text that researchers can flip through at their convenience without getting bogged down in dense PDFs.
Guided form builder to ease logistics
The current form to request PRA clearance is a poorly designed Word document that researchers must manually fill out and submit over email. For a later version of PRA Navigator, I proposed a form builder that would compile a neat package for researchers and submit it for them.
Reflection
What I learned
Trying to comprehend policy is certainly not something I thought I would be doing as a designer! I learned how to get comfortable with it fast to understand how it impacted my project.
The ability to zoom in and out
Because my work on PRA is one piece of a larger Research Operations puzzle, I strove to maintain a focus on the nitty-gritty tasks necessary to push the Navigator forward while maintaining an awareness of how this work fits into a the project’s goals and roadmap at a higher level.
Design is straightforward - getting people on board is less so!
I learned a great deal from my more experienced team about how to strategically manage relationships and tell a compelling story to get people in your corner.
Moving forward
My immediate next step is to work with a front-end developer to implement the Figma designs and run another round of usability testing once that is complete.
Getting approvals
Before shipping this platform, we have to get cross-agency sign offs from lawyers and leadership.
Defining key metrics
We have gathered a lot of qualitative evidence to support the fact that PRA clearance is one of the major barriers to user research with the public, but I want to define metrics to quantify the impact the PRA Navigator will have, as well as to measure the savings in time and cost for my organization.
Long-term ownership and maintenance
There is a new program within my organization that we are working with to own and maintain this product, but the details of that agreement need to be hammered out before shipping.
This project is ongoing - please stay tuned for updates!