CX Strategy and UX Lead
I initiated the CX strategy by aligning business objectives and goals with stakeholder expectations and understanding technical limitations of legacy systems and dependencies so that requirements for the VicTraffic project suite could be added and prioritised for the project road map.
A research plan identified research objective, goal, methods and activities, recruitment approach, research artefacts and delivery timeline.
Business context
The VicTraffic was created in 2013 to support transport users with road disruption information. During the 2019/2020 bushfires the public was struggling to find the latest updated road closure information online and to add to the confusion the Google Maps journey planner sent traffic towards bushfire affected roads. The outdated VicTraffic infrastructure was unable to cope with the demand of real-time road closure information due to the severity and wide-spread emergency covering Victoria and New South Wales.
The VicTraffic project initiative was formed to act on the recommendations of the Royal Commission to enable the general public and emergency responders to move around the road network safely and confidently during major emergencies.
Royal Commission Recommendations
👉 State and territory governments should include road closure and opening information on all roads within their borders on public websites/apps.
👉 Information should be provided in realtime or in advance based on predictions, where possible.
User groups
It was important to understand who used VicTraffic and identify all different user groups. The departments believe was that only the general public used VicTraffic but it became apparent that VicTraffic was used by emergency services, essential services, industry, council and frontline responders. The media and news is constantly referring to VicTraffic as the source of truth for road closure information during emergencies and is directing everyone to VicTraffic.
Systems and data flow
The effectiveness of the VicTraffic product suite relied heavily on the accuracy and quality of its data. Previously, the old website suffered from outdated, duplicated, misleading, or incomplete information. VicTraffic sources its data from various planned and unplanned disruption APIs, integrating multiple systems and sources. SITREP, an outdated legacy system, urgently needed an update. Discovery research underscored the necessity for further exploration and investment into the system. These insights were then utilised by the SITREP project team to develop comprehensive requirements.
🧐 Distilling the details – discovery research and learnings
It was paramount to learn from peoples experiences while driving during emergency situations and understand how road closure data is collected during major and minor emergencies and how the data flows through to VicTraffic.
During the discovery session I was able to talk to people who had lived experiences while driving through the 2019/20 bushfires, the 2021/22 floods and the 2021 severe weather event in the Dandenong's where residents were cut off from power supply and accessible roads.
I organised group interviews with emergency management services to understand how they all work together during high impact events and how the data is collected and shared. Gaps and pain points came soon to light.
User groups
Participants from the public were recruited via social media, Askable and through stakeholder contacts. Emergency management organisations were invited to participate in the group workshops.
Research methods
- Moderated discovery interviews
- Group interviews
- Survey
Discovery learnings
After conducting the discovery sessions a total of 6 mindset personas (archetypes) emerged. The public and emergency services have different goals and motivations but similar needs and desires when it comes to road and traffic information. With this information the project team could quickly work out requirements for each persona before, during and after an emergency event and prioritise features that have high impact, are easier to develop over others, work with the current systems and data delivery and others that are high value but need more funding.
The emerging themes in the discovery phase were consistent within all different user groups.
This is a diagram we created after speaking to emergency management services and DTP stakeholders. In this comprehensive diagram we captured the flow of information and associated challenges and pain points. It highlights a few things – all organisations that have a stake in the information flow, the lengthy and manual process of getting data on to VicTraffic, the need to communicate to other orgs and the public as as consistently as possible. The insights from the work with the general public and emergency management services provided valuable insights for the RID project team
🤨 Design exploration and iteration
Armed with insights and learnings from the customer discovery work I initiated the start to explore and test different ideas and concepts.
Design Thinking Sprints
Using a design thinking methodology co-design sessions with the project team and stakeholders allowed for ideas to be generated into wireframes.
👉 Review exisiting VicTraffic features and received feedback
👉 Landscape review of digital features that help in an emergency response
👉 Co-design workshops exploring new ideas with project team
👉 Journey mapping activity based on a personas motivation and behaviour before during and after an emergency event
Journey mapping activity involving the project team and DTP stakeholders
The co-design workshop with the project team helped to generate new ideas for how to best deliver the right data along all stages of the journey.
Prototype testing
The wireframes were converted into clickable prototypes and tested with potential users.
👉 Testing desire for and understanding of new features
👉 Exploring technical feasibility aligned to business priorities
👉 Iterate on designs and test again
Mobile prototype from round 1 of feature testing - helping to identify and prioritise features for the product road map.
🤨 New features and prototype testing
Throughout the VicTraffic project the design and features have been constantly tested with the different user groups taking into account Customer Effort Score, SUPRQ and NPS.
The new VicTraffic was launched on the 12 June 2024 and the design and features are based on evidence design collected through all research sessions and with the aim to meet the Royal Commission Recommendations and while not all proposed features have been developed the VicTraffic website will hopefully provide a trusted sources of road disruption information in the future.
Visit the VicTraffic website – traffic.transport.vic.gov.au