INTRODUCTION

GARP Benchmarking Initiative (GBI) offers a unique user portal for the banks and institutions to participate and access the studies from GARP’s database.

After a few years of the initial launch of this user portal, I have found so many problems and room for improvements to make the portal lot more user-friendly and intuitive. Some of the major problems are listed in below.

THE PROBLEM

• Look & Feel is not consistent across the portal

• The portal does not offer an intuitive user experience

• The long list of studies on the homepage is causing a slower load time, and it’s hard to search through the studies

• User management is done manually by the member services team, and participants are heavily dependent on the team

PROJECT GOALS

• Look & Feel and overall design must be in line with the brand, but it needs to be timeless

• Improve how the studies display on the homepage

• Improve the filters and add search functionality

• Add autonomous user management feature in the initial registration of the study

SOLUTION #1

The number one problem with the highest priority to solve was improving how the studies were displayed on the homepage as it was causing slower load time, making it difficult for the users to browse through the study.

• Separated study categories into three buckets as below in a card style

  • My Studies

  • My Organization’s Studies

  • All Other Studies

• All the studies are marked ‘In Progress’ or ‘Completed.’

• Only display three studies per bucket as default for the faster load time, and the ‘view more studies’ button will reveal additional studies on each click

• Re-worked on the typography hierarchy

• Added filter and search functionality for ease of the use

SOLUTION #2

Adding an autonomous user management feature was the most challenging part of this project. There were many different user types and complex business rules around accessibility for every kind of user. After going through multiple rounds of edits with the stakeholders, we have finalized the strategy around the admin role and the onboarding/offboarding flow.

• Create an uber user (admin) during the initial setup of the study

  • this admin role can add other people into the study if they are from the same institution

• If a new user is added to the study, they will mark them as ‘proposed’ until the member services team marks them as ‘active’ (security check purposes)

• Admin can also add existing users from different studies into the new study

• Admin can edit other participant’s information

• Each user can have multiple roles

• Admin can remove other participants from the study

• Once a participant has been removed from the study, they will be marked as ‘Suspended’