OOTify Admin
Dashboard
Role: Product Design Lead
Duration: March 2024 - Present
The Problem
The admin dashboard was essential for measuring the impact of mental health initiatives for students using the OOTify app. Since users may be battling depression and anxiety, simply providing tools wasn’t enough—we needed to ensure interventions were truly effective.
A key concern realized was the substantial volume of students each administrator would be responsible for managing. This disparity meant that administrators needed to be able to glance at the dashboard and immediately get a quick but comprehensive overview.
Process & Experience
Given the limited pool of administrators, it was clear the application needed to be centered around efficiently highlighting critical information.
Contrast: Black text exclusively used for titles and statistics to heighten visibility and enable faster scanning
Visual Hierarchy: Proximity guides the user’s navigation by grouping closely related items, minimizing cognitive load
Clarity: Overly bright and distracting colors were avoided in favor of distinct, functional colors
Equally important was ensuring the application remained intuitive and straightforward while still supporting an extensive set of administrative actions.
Consistency: Shared elements and layouts across pages enhances usability and simplifies implementation
User Control: Fully customizable layouts and filters expedite information retrieval
User Guidance: Tool-tips and information on advanced system features provided where ambiguity could emerge
Iteration
In response to testing feedback, complex graphs were standardized and made more easily comprehensible to improve users' ability to derive meaningful insights from the data presented.
Also uncovered through testing was the need to balance the use of sensitive data. While important to give administrators tools to identify at-risk individuals, upholding the privacy of personal entries was vital to retaining user trust.
The Takeaway
Designing for Developers: Using grids and consistent elements drastically reduced the required code, time, and potential for errors
Usability: Aesthetics often need to be sacrificed for usability, following conventions can be ideal as it is often more intuitive
Cognitive Bias: Receiving feedback from multiple sources was a must, users may not have the same context designers have
