Eastern Foundry — Research, Data and My Broken Hand
Let’s talk government contracting. I know, you’re ready to stop right there, but hear me out. I’ll make it as fun as possible, I promise.
Fact: The Federal Government is the world’s largest consumer of goods and services. Every year, hundreds of branches submit RFPs and RFQs through various websites and businesses bid on them. It adds up — we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars every year, but the process is…well, it’s complicated. Many bids have extensive summaries and specific requirements, as well as precise timeframes. There are various online avenues to submit bids, both paid and unpaid, but we suspect that they’re not as user friendly as they could be. And that leads us to the Opportunity:
How can we create a system that addresses the issues users have with the current protocol and allows for a more efficient bid process, while taking into account restrictions imposed by the government?
Phew. No biggie, except that the FBO (FedBizOpps — the government’s main channel for posting opportunities) has over 12 million bids. Old bids aren’t necessarily removed because the information must be transparent. It makes for an interesting process.
Our client, Eastern Foundry, is in a unique position. As an office space tailored specifically for contractors, they have a network of small businesses and individuals. While bids are submitted online, contracting is also a social business. It matters who contractors know, as some opportunities require teaming for various reasons. Using their existing network, Eastern Foundry wants to pivot into matching contractors with opportunities. With that in mind, my partner Samri Bayou and I got to work. Samri excels in visual design and I’ve got experience in project management and client relationships, so I built us a schedule and we got to work.
The Process: Research
Hanging in there? I’m going to shoot for less writing now and more pictures to illustrate the process. To kickoff, I did some competitive research:
Key takeaway: Eastern Foundry can’t compete with their competitors on data, at least not yet. So what were these channels missing? Where is the gap in service?
User Interviews
I put together an interview script so we could talk to contractors familiar with the marketplace and the platforms. As I’ve mentioned, contracting is a complicated business so I won’t go into all the details (side note: the client WAS impressed by how much I did understand — shameless pat on the back there), but we got a wealth of information from users. I’m a big fan of affinity maps to synthesize the data so here’s a little taste of that in its raw form.
We did seven interviews and one survey with similar questions and I pulled out the responses and grouped them into themes.
From the rough version, I created a small visual that highlighted the main points in essential components for bid sites, as well as issues and a sort of “wish list” that users could get along without, but felt would make the job easier.
Armed with this info, we created a few user personas and started narrowing down what features an MVP would need. Plot twist! Right about this moment in the project, I broke my hand (and someone else’s face) in a truly epic and accidental water polo collision. Then I needed surgery so all my bones could be pinned back together! The other guy is fine now, too, but you know. That was a setback.
Even one-handed (and it was my dominant right hand), I can still do user flows. Love that organization, but you know, it’s not everyone’s thing. Feel free to skip this part if it’s not your jam. Just demonstratin’ the skill should that be a thing someone wants to know about.
The attention to detail is really what I’m trying to illustrate here. The process has a lot of variables and I wish we’d had two months to do this rather than two weeks, but we crunched as much as we could into that time.
At this point, my hand gave up on me (and I had to have a hard cast put on), so Samri busted out some excellent wireframes to go with our user flows.
Usability Testing
With the initial wireframes, we decided to run through a couple of tests before elevating our design.
What we discovered was that although users were largely interested in the data behind the app, the response to the UI was positive — “clean and uncluttered,” according to one user. Ideally, in the next stages of this project, we would partner with a data scientist to make sure we are designing an experience that best displays all the necessary data for contractors.
Prototype
And then we made a prototype showing some of the user flows. One of the biggest changes we made based on feedback and research was keyword highlights. Contractors want to be able to review bids as quickly as possible to see if there is anything that might disqualify them. If they could enter in both positive and negative keywords that would be highlighted within the bid itself, it would give them a better quick view to decide if they want to add to the pipeline to revisit later or share. The video is about a minute.
Next Steps
This is really just a launching point. I think the research and opportunity are solid, but it needs more iterations and tests, as well as more user flows, such as submitting the bids and a tie in to the website. Most users are interested in having access to an app for quick communication, but the submission processes can be very detailed and users prefer a desktop. The key will be creating a seamless integration between site and app.
And that’s the gist of it! Also, my hand is healing and I got a lot of compliments on my shark cast.