​
Redesigning Apple's Internal
Project Management platform
Apple Project Spaces
Challenge
My Role
How might we help PM's at Apple better track projects within Radar and create a more connected, less time consuming and organized workflow.
UX Research, Wire-framing & Product Design
Year
Timeline
Tools
2021
12 weeks
Sketch, Miro, Affluence & Numbers
Project Tracking Templates
Individual Project Spaces
Archived Project Templates
Outcomes
3
Concepts launched
6
Usability test sessions conducted
65,000
Apple Employee work streams impacted by my designs
10
User Research & Particapatory Design sessions conducted
01
Understand
Context
At Apple, I was tasked to work on Radar, an internal issue tracking system that ties all of the teams at Apple together, giving them a place to organize and track their work.
In addition to issue tracking and reporting, many employees were beginning to use Radar for Project management and so they wanted Radar's capabilities to continue expanding.
​
Employees at Apple were looking for a "one stop shop" solution where they would be able to document and track all stages of a project life cycle and that's what I was assigned to deliver.
Problem Definition
Our user and business problem can be summed up as the following:
Radar lacked a true concept of a project, so employees often had to resort to 3rd party tools, leading to a disconnected, time consuming, expensive and unorganized workflow.
Discovery
I first conducted a series of 10 in depth User Research Interviews with avid users of Radar which included seasoned EPM's and Engineers at Apple. These interviews led me discover several important findings.
Too many touch points - There were too many tools for employees when tracking efforts across teams. Managers wanted their work to be closer to Radar
Lack of Visibility across teams - There was a lack of visibility around who is responsible for a task when tracking projects, which was important when managing resource capacity and tracking deadlines
Lack of flexibility with charting data - When tracking various efforts of a project, managers tend to use several types of data to understand all the moving pieces. At the time, there was no tool that could “house” all the different pieces of a project
02
Gain Confidence
Ideate + Iterate
Form the insights collected from research, my team and I first came up with a concept of a "Project Space", a collaborative dashboard that would:
Design Goals
Align team members and management when scoping out a project
Kept up to date on progress being done as the project progresses towards launch
Be aware of all the different pieces/elements to track at different phases of the project
​
Since Project Spaces were still at an intial brainstorming stage, my team and I decided to also conduct a series of a participatory design activity to gain more of a design direction and concepts to validate within the limited time I had.
​
We set up an activity on Numbers that consisted of a basic skeleton of a project space with samples of cards that participants could add or edit to create their ideal spaces. Through this exercise we were able to have more in depth conversations around what project management functionalities employees at Apple were currently lacking and what they really needed.
Discovery
These were some of our key takeaways for what employees needed the most out of "Project Spaces":
The ability to see specific data depending on the phase of the project
The ability to have the flexibility to configure/format the dashboard
The ability to share elements of the Project Spaces with stakeholders
The ability manage access and disclosure easily
The ability to have a personal space to take notes and link documents​
03
Polish
Finished Designs
The finished product seamlessly brought together several important things.
01.
Project templating based on phases (scoping, implementation, testing, etc)
02.
A variety of data visualization cards based on phases (charts, tables, etc)
03.
The ability to export project spaces to report progress at any given point
04.
The ability to archive project spaces and create templates for teammates
_gif.gif)
PT PAL
Expanding LinkedIn's career resources to blue collar workers
Helping patients take control of their physical rehabilitation journeys
Ampcontrol
Designing an energy management dashboard to help track and manage EV fleet operations