MTR Horse Stressor App

Webapp

How can farms track horse stressors more efficiently?

Maryland Therapeutic Riding — September ‘23

Maryland Therapeutic Riding

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MY ROLE

Design Manager—Design Leadership, Information Architecture, Prototyping, Interaction Design, Visual Design.

TOOL STACK

Figma

Figjam

Miro

Notion

Google Docs

Pen & Paper

TEAM

Fatima Ortega, Clara Yoo, Amie Trang, Natalie Zhu, Eric Kim, Grace Guan, Aleksandr Molchagin, Angelo David

TIMELINE & STATUS

3 Months, Handed off for implementation

BACKGROUND

Over the course of three months, As a Develop ForGood volunteer, I worked with a team of product engineers, managers and designers to design and build a web-based enterprise tool for MTR, a centre that helps individuals with overall wellness and mental well-being through the use of the therapeutic power of horseback riding.

Goal

Develop an MVP internal tool that supports partners at MTR with access to data-rich metrics in their goal to give their herd the best care and health possible.

Outcome

The app replaces the current tool (Excel) MTR staff use to edit and calculate horses stress; while introducing features to efficiently track and visualize data, monitor overall herd performance and enable communication between staff.
Handed Off Q3 2023

Client

Maryland
Therapeutic
Riding

MTR’ is a Farm — who's mission is to help individuals with overall wellness and mental well-being through the use of the therapeutic power of horseback riding.

Competitive Analysis identifies and evaluates the business strategies of your competitors, resulting in the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) for your product relative to the competitors’ in a business ecosystem. Further analysis may provide an insight to your product strategy.

The analysis is often conducted in the early stages of product development. As the dynamics of products in the ecosystem change rapidly, many companies have embraced agile competitive analysis as a part of their product strategy.
by UX Indonesia

Problem Statement

To get efficiency improvements in their herd operations, MTR Staff need easier ways to;
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1. Enable higher levels of horse stressor tracking & customization,
2. Tier access for primary and secondary users,
3. Reduce administrative time spent on maintaining the current excel sheet,
4. Communicate efficiently across teams.

Opportunity

Success for MTR would mean;
‍
1. a more Efficient Team
2. a Healthier Herd
3. Lower operating costs &
4. a rich Data pool for fund-raising activities.

✦ Context

From Excel Sheets, To Bespoke WebApp

0.1 Before — After. ⬇

✦ Highlight

Tiered Access and Edit Capabilities

Authentication and onboarding to the platform were bifurcated according to user requirements (PT instructors and Admin staff) with differing levels of access.

1.1Onboarding process showing tiered access interactions. ⬇

PAIN POINT ADDRESSED:

a. Admin staff can use their profiles to access or edit sensitive/non-sensitive information which PT accounts can't;
Access to Administrative capabilities through edit-leaning buttons and a staff management tab in side panel.
b. Both tiers have access to rich data pool and communication channels.

✦ Highlight

Onboarding, Authentication & Communication

Onboarding & authentication are structured to be easy & quick, leading into direct communication with staff members.

2.1Onboarding & Authentication process to Inbox Flow. ⬇

PAIN POINT ADDRESSED:

a. Communication between staff can easily be accessed and attended to by priority.
b. Due to the high number of volunteer staff, PT onboarding is quick and simple.

✦ Highlight

Horse Stress Levels Management (Alerts & Tracking)

This feature automatically sorts Horses into stress categories according to levels of burnout.
Also contained are tabs for data collation & CTAs to aid communication.

3.1Before - Horse Stress Management. ⬇

3.2Now - Interactions showing horse Stress Management. ⬇

PAIN POINT ADDRESSED:

a. Easily-digested data.
b. Data-led & gamified leaderboards for insight deduction.
c. CTAs that enable Admins to alert or send reminders to pony partners, massively improving the efficiency of all involved.

✦ Highlight

4.1Interaction showing horse profile creation flow.⬇

4.2Interaction showing stressor management & feedback feature. ⬇

4.3Interaction showing horse profile overview & history. ⬇

Managing Horse Profiles

This contains 3 core features of the app; giving editors the ability to easily add or delete a horse's profile as well as edit & customize.
While PT staff can simply view and track a horse’s activities over time.

PAIN POINT ADDRESSED:

a. Admin staff can also view its History and customize a Horse's stressors.
b. PT staff can simply view and track a horse’s activities over time.

✦ Highlight

Stressors Customization

The ability to input custom values for custom Stressor types.
(Stressor Types: activity for horse on a given day, Stressor values: customized for every horse for stress experienced per event)

5.1Before—Stressor default customization for all Horses. ⬇

5.2After—Interaction design showing Stressor default customization for all Horses Now. ⬇

PAIN POINT ADDRESSED:

a. Stressor types & values can be easily changed en-masse

✦ Highlight

Staff Profile Management

6.1 Interaction showing Staff Profile Management. ⬇

✦ Highlight

Rich data Insights

Data-rich dashboard collating data from all Horses.
Also, insight tabs on Individual horses, detailing their stress levels, activities and general health over a session, week or day.

7.1 A personalized view of the dashboard for either administrative or general staff members. ⬇

🔧 Handoff

Optimising for Near-perfect* Implementation.

We learnt what to spec out, annotate or redline over time by asking what makes life easier for implementation.

8.1Modal & overlay annotations. ⬇

8.2Variant screens for development. ⬇

🐴 Strategy

Scrumfall

We (did not set out to, but-) employed an agile-waterfall hybrid to suit our style of work

9.1Standups, Design Charrettes & Presentations. ⬇

9.2Use of animated storyboards to explain tiered access features to Clients. ⬇

9.3Lots of Async recordings for meetings that could *not* have been emails. ⬇

🌿 Retrospective

We achieved positive results on all of KPIs:
User Errors while using application - Very Low
User satisfaction (SUS/NPS scores) - A/8
Time on task (aiming for a reduction) - 75% less

Rose, BUD, Thorn 💐🌹 ⓧ

Our metrics were qualitative due to the nature of the project, time sensitivity, as well as our research methods (Client interviews, domain research).

Using the ROSE, BUD, THORN template, we assessed what;
i. Stakeholders liked,
ii. Did not like,
iii. & What could have been improved or differently.

0.2 Testimonials from clients & stakeholders. →

💐Roses

”I was impressed with how it is a pretty big concept… you got the concept really well of what we were looking for and created a solution for that”

”You were able to encompass a lot of the details we were looking for that would help us in the long run.” ”I love it…it’s so cool!”

- Erin, (Clients)

"The team conveyed the problem statement with confidence while showing the amount of attention has been put into solve this problem for the non profit. The presentation was engaging and compelling from start to finish. Job well done"
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- Stakeholders

"The team was incredibly thoughtful in how they visualized their thought process for solving the client's problem. Design was clean and easy to understand"
‍
- Stakeholders

"They mentioned that there was some issues in the back and forth of managing client concerns Its clear this team is excellent at their technical and social skills but should endeavor to work on their client service. Excellent job!"