Cortex agent portal
I was a UX consultant on one of our clients’ project, Cortex. Cortex is a customer service agent portal for managing client accounts and loans. Their engineering team has been working on this project for awhile but since they don’t have a UX designer on the team, I was tasked with reviewing their current design, conducting UX research, and providing UX strategy and recommendations.
Role
UX Researcher, UX consultant
Deliverables
Foundational UX research plan & execution, user survey, personas, task flows, UX and visual design recommendations
Date
Dec 2022-Jan 2023
Project overview
User research: summary
During foundational UX research, I interviewed customer service agents and their supervisors who are the current Cortex system’s users. I also created and sent out a user survey to all of them. I performed usability studies by shadowing the agents and viewed the recorded sessions. I then analyzed the results and created personas, problem statements, and user flows. System Usability Scale (SUS) is also used to measure the current system’s usability and as one of the KPIs for this project.
User Survey
I sent out a survey to the current Cortex users. The purpose of this survey is to evaluate the current UI using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and to identify any pain points from the participants’ feedback.
Persona & task flow
I conducted interviews with the agents and their supervisors who use Cortex regularly at work. There are 5 teams of agents and each team has different role and user flow. I created persona, problem statement, and the task flow diagram for users in each team based on the interviews and survey results.
Pain Points
Presenting UX research findings & UX recommendations
I presented my UX research findings and any recommendations I have to the stakeholders, including accessibility recommendations and requirements. I also wrote a documentation which has all the design recommendations and supporting data.
Design solution - allowing agents to split a makeup payment
When the customers attempt to make up their missed payment, they often request to pay in installments. The biggest pain point for Customer Advocacy agents is that the original design doesn't allow them to split a makeup payment. Therefore, they have to manually schedule separate payments. Even in the best-case scenario, the entire process would still take over 30 steps. The new flow will allow users to add a discount, split the payment, and customize the payment schedule all on one tab. It could take the users under 10 steps which is over a 66% decease. (The prototype was made using the client's original design elements.)
Visual design challenge & suggested solution
The client’s original design doesn’t have a design system, resulting in inconsistent UI. There are also many accessibility issues and concerns with the current UI components. However, their engineering team has already started developing the new system and has tight deadlines. I was informed that they won’t be able to create all new components. Because of those reasons, I suggested that they use Material UI, Google’s open source React library. I also created a custom design system based on the library and mocked up a visual design concept for their consideration.
New visual design concept
Design system (Using Material UI design kit)
Impacts
While I was a consultant on this project for only one month. I think that I have made many impacts during that time. The following are just some of them.
1. Ensure Accessibility 2.Provided users insights 3.Set up KPIs (SUS, time on task, error rates, etc.) 4.Provided design solutions 5.Provide visual design suggestions
