In Winter of 2018, a consultant agency reached out to me with a request to streamline and modernize the way in which they estimated their project budgets and timelines. The process of that time required advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel and an in-depth understanding of all dependencies required to meet proposed deliverables. Senior and higher-level consultants were utilized in filling out areas within the Excel related to their respective work specializations. The company explained that the training on how to use the Excel document took up valuable resource time, but still resulted in numerous errors due to the complexities involved. Furthermore, as the company emailing the single Excel document around for editing, there were resulting fragmentations in versioning and each new version released required explaining the meaning of the changes. Project estimates required a few months’ time to complete, not including further rewrites requested by clients. Altogether, the general consensus was that they were losing time and potential money by relying on this process.

The project was provided a small interdisciplinary team with myself as the main UX resource, with oversight. I was assisted by a handful of other UX resources as their time allowed. A release deadline was set to a few months after kickoff. I utilized project estimate training materials in order to become immersed in the experience users at that time went through before using the Excel document. Such research also provided an intimate understanding of what the formulas in use represented and why they were displayed as they were within the Excel document. Rapid, low fidelity wireframes were then produced and presented to stakeholders in order to define initial direction. My proposal for a real-time, collaborative tool, such as an online application that included a guided, step-by-step creation process similar to a wizard application, was well received. My intent with this solution was to reduce training time and potential data inaccuracies, as well as prevent the version fragmentation caused by disparate files. The process could support streamlined communication between team members, reducing the number of bulky emails passed around.

My initial high-level navigation and organization of process steps and calculations leveraged the training materials, and the existing Excel document, as a baseline. From there, I produced a site map and higher fidelity wireframes so that developers could work on the website structure and navigation while interaction and UI details were defined. At the end of each chunk of development, users and stakeholders were brought in to review. Project solutions and next steps were adapted based off of the feedback received. An atomic design approach allowed developers to reuse elements, and rapidly update a single element across all areas of the application, when necessary.

The final state of the project estimate application on launch allowed for real-time, collaborative editing between multiple team members, documentation of client discussions and needs, error checking for hour allocation on individual resources, estimates of projected profit margins, and exportable reports for Statements of Work to be presented to the client for contracting, to name a few. Stakeholders and users were onboarded in how to use the finalized system, and the product oversight was transferred over to their internal IT department. I recommended that passive usage tracking be setup in order to allow the company to refine the application as time went on. Reports from the consultant agency confirmed that this tool reduced overall time taken to complete a project estimate, required less training to use in comparison to the Excel document, and enhanced the overall frequency of communication between team members.