BlackBerry Documentation Web Portal

Project Type: Web
Company: Research In Motion [website]
Duration: 6 Months
Role: Interaction Designer

Results

Completed Web Portal: - [link]

Context

A recent overhaul of the BlackBerry website had left RIM's documentation team with a temporary website that was plagued with usability issues on both the publishing and the end user sides. A new system needed to be created that addressed the needs of the documentation publishers and the usability needs of the end users. My role was to design the layout and visual look of the website for a third party company who would build the system itself.

Process

Upon forming the team for this project, I was given the responsibility to insure good usability, consistency with the existing BlackBerry website and meet the needs of stakeholders who would be using the site both front end and back end.

I took a look at the existing BlackBerry site and noted colours, layout, style, areas flexible to change and features that needed to stay.

Draft Information Architecture of Web Portal

I consulted the project lead and other members of the documentation team to understand how documents were published. Using this information, I created a rough information architecture illustrating how front and back end users would navigate through the system. On the front-end side, it was important to consider the situations in which they would arrive at the web portal. On the back-end, it was important to understand how a published document would end up accessable to an end user as well as editing capabilities. This intial information architecture draft was then ultimatly finalized by the project lead.

With all this information, I proceeded to create wireframes for selective pages of the portal. This was presented to the team to ensure that it accommodated all the information that they wanted to present. This was then shown to the team at the third party company where they pointed out any technical constraints that they saw. Changes were made accordingly.

Once this was agreed upon, the next step was to create a set of mockups for the various pages of the site. Mockups were made for the main landing page, the sub landing pages, one sample document page, and a sample search results page.

3 Different Lateral Process Mock-ups of Selecting Versions

On certain elements where the team couldn't decide in a discussion, I created quick mock-ups of various possible options of the element allowing them to visualize the differences.

Early Version of End User Landing Page Created By Third Party Company

Once the mock-ups were sent in, the third party company began building the website.

Cut-and-Paste Mock-up With Comments of Changes Requested

There was a lot of back and forth between our team and theirs to refine the design. Compromises were made for technical constraints and changes were made as problems were discovered. Upon leaving RIM, I was able to confidently hand off my work to the project lead and developers to complete and build the web portal. The end result was a site that was virtually the same in look and organization as the mock-ups and architecture that I provided.

Recently the site has gotten a face lift to reflect the shift in style for their new BlackBery Storm and BlackBerry Bold smartphones. However the information architecture of the site which I worked on has remained intact and continues to work well.