R360
“If only we have put COVID-19 into our risk radar, we could’ve been more prepared”. Risks are everywhere – when a person go out of his or her house, drove to the office, and back to their beds – it is better to come prepared. Looking at the bigger picture, the impact of these risk events is even more important to corporations where millions of people heavily depend on their products and services.
Preparation
With around 20 years of experience in risk management, Beehive’s leadership has developed and offered a framework:
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Identification - Risk experts conduct online or in-person workshops to identify risks that exist within the entity. They categorize the risk using a standardized risk taxonomy to identify the weakest area in the business.
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Dimension - Risks will undergo series of assessment starting from the validity of the risk; its impact in different areas of finance, disruption, reputation, legal & regulation, human and strategies; and how vulnerability the company is from the risk events – are the controls, and crisis response established should it materialize? Is the risk event external, and will it be difficult to be controlled?
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Mitigation - Documentation of their existing controls, crisis response, and future action plans to shield the business from any materializing risks by looking within the company and in the industry.
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Reporting & Monitoring - Providing 360 view on all the risks, mitigations, and action plans while monitoring its performance.
As a preparation for the bigger project, Beehive’s leadership came up with a project to create a simple version of their risk management app for an upcoming workshop. Prototyping was done closely with the CEO who will be its first user in conducting the workshop and documenting the clients’ risks.
The prototype was then developed and was released as the first version. It will be used to gather insights and is expected to open doors of opportunities from a UX-standpoint.
Empathize, Definition
With the version 1 being released, version 2 is aimed to improve experience, add features and functionalities – all in three months. The new app will be used on a regular basis, and not only during workshops.
The team conducted a user test with 5 representative users from a standpoint of daily usage via Zoom. The representative users are selected based on their roles (head of department and above), and years in the industry (15+). Immersion was also conducted through attending and facilitating risk management workshops and creating manual reports.
To further analyze and synthesize the test outcome and stories, the team gathered in a workshop to do affinity mapping to draw insights from what they users said, thought, did, and felt from different lenses:
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It brought to attention that our target users were confused and frustrated with the use of icon buttons. It adds cognitive load by taking the time of translating lines and icons into its meaning.
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While icons confuse users, the loads of information on the screen overwhelm the users and thereby, not being able to know how to navigate through the application to achieve their goal.
While empathy map drew the superficial problems of version 1, Affinity map helped reveal connections among the stories, and test outcome. It uncovered the following problem statements:
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Risk experts need to drive actions in order prevent risks from materializing
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Risk committee needs visibility in all the risks from the entire organization including operating committees to understand situation, next steps, and insights.
Ideation
The team brainstormed to pinpoint solutions. We started asking “How might we” questions to generate ideas:
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How might we drive actions and visibility in terms of risk management?
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How might we make the UI friendly for director-level users?
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How might we establish visibility in the entire organization including its subsidiaries from a risk management standpoint?
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How might we ensure that risks are accounted for?
Mural was used to post sticky notes and vote on creative ideas. The team selected development of AI for risks suggestions, machine learning, minimalist and assistive UI, and notifications. The app is aimed to be developed smarter, and interactive. However, due to time constraint, AI and machine learning will be deferred to the third release to ensure quality of work.
Ten minutes were allocated to do quick paper prototyping to make them tangible.
Data structure and sitemap were produced to prepare for the development.
Prototyping and Testing
Figma was utilized to design the prototype – all of which are closely worked with the CEO. Medium-fidelity mockups were crafted to test interactivity and animation.
Laws of UX applied:
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Aesthetic-Usability Effect – Design is made enjoyable, interactive, and pleasing to influence positive emotions.
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Hick’s law – Numbers of options and buttons are trimmed down to focus more on what’s important.
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Zeigarnik Effect – Forms are divided into several steps with progress bar to signify success. In-line validations were implemented to help users correct data firsthand.
Retrospective
“There is still a lot to work on”, as said by Beehive’s CEO. Version 2 is developed to gather more data about the users and the app’s usage as time did not permit to conduct more interviews and user research.
In order to ensure marketability, competitor’s research suggested that the user interface and workflows must be customizable to the company’s business process. After all, risk management is a culture that is embedded on a company’s business process, right? Risk management is also not a siloed process, and must be partnered with compliance management, vendor management, audit management and incident management to provide a more holistic approach.
Screenshots
