The system we designed aimed to create a seamless experience for the company to manage their event request, audit and expense reconcile process. It involved multiple teams and levels of users, sothe access of information needed to be differentiated by user identity.

The main request from the client was that the new design had to bridge the gap between the two separate systems they are currently using - one for event application and the other for event audit. These Systems involved a certain amount of manual work that could possibly result in human error.

There were two main challenges for this project:

• We didn’t have access to the system that we needed to redesign as it required VPN access. Instead, we were relying on screenshots that the client company had sent through to visualize what the current process should be like.
• The language gap. The client company used Mandarin as their main working language, so all the screenshots we received were in Chinese with ambiguous English translations. We realized that there was a gap in understanding between ourselves and the client due to our cultural differences.

One of my roles in this project was to be the translator for the team. My work included translating the screenshots sent by the client, figuring out the correlation between screenshots to map out the user flow for the current system, and communicating with the client champion in Mandarin to report design processes and confirm that the team was heading in the right direction.

Define each role of user and their missions

This system would involve four different kinds of user: The Manager, the Field Specialist, the Audit Team and the Finance Team. Each user type would have different access to screens, fields and action buttons. To measure the goal and mission for each user type, we reviewed all of the screenshots and the explanation document that the client had sent us and mapped out the user flow. We then associated each screen with the user type and figured out what action they would need to complete on each screen.

We print out screenshots and try to map out the user flow

User Type and Tasks

Design assets of Veeva

As the client requested that the system should be hosted on Veeva, we needed to adopt Veeva UI assets in order to visualize the final look of the system. As there is no existing UI kit for Veeva, I had to imitate the visual asset of Veeva from the screenshot provided by an official source of Veeva.

Sketch Symbol Library - Veeva Assets

Takeaway

As the work pattern in China is completely different to what the western world is familiar with, combined with the actual design of the screen, we were confused by several parts of the current system’s screens and features. I wanted to propose a new way to optimize the user experience,but I soon realized that there were cultural differences. This meant that things I thought should be simplified also needed to fit in with the cultural context. Moving forward with the design process, I had to keep communicating with the client about elements that we could not understand and try to place ourselves in the client's position to find their reasoning for doing things in a particular way.