Polygons in Search

Product UX/UI Design Lead

Company: Seerist
In Collaboration with: Product Manager, Dev Team

Context

The goal of this project was to integrate the "Polygon" feature from Seerist Core (Control Risks) into the Seerist platform's Search. In addition to this integration, I addressed usability issues within Seerist’s Search as identified through user feedback, including navigation confusion and an overwhelming interface. Working closely with the Product Manager, I iterated on wireframes and prototypes to improve the user experience while ensuring the new feature aligned with business objectives.

Challenges

Managing Product Input on Design Decisions

Challenge: The product team frequently presented design requirements that conflicted with established UX heuristics and user experience best practices.

Solution: I developed design solutions that balanced the product team’s requirements with a user-centered approach. I facilitated open communication and provided guidance on UX principles and heuristics to inform design decisions, ensuring alignment.

Project Requirements from Product Manager

Intro & Scope

In this story, we will implement the ability to create and use a new custom polygon as a method of geography selection within Search. This capability is the core focus of MVP.

This is to give users much greater specificity of control over the geographies that they are Searching in.

In future stories we look at implementing the process of selecting an existing polygon and how to save and manage these polygons. These fall outside of MVP scope and will be delivered in future iterations. The current story focuses on new polygon creation in Search only.

Requirements

Existing Polygons are listed within Polygons section of ‘Locations’ in Search

List is paginated
User can Search by polygon title
User can select an existing polygon for the Search
- Selecting a polygon causes it to display on the map
User can edit an existing polygon
- Allows user to change polygon title
- Allows user to change polygon area (on map)
User can delete an existing polygon

User Story

As a: local security analyst

I want to: select from previously drawn/saved polygons

So that I can: closely monitor for highly relevant events and content, giving me the clear insights I need and avoiding the noise associated with wider, more arbitrary alerting and Search areas

User Personas

To address low usability issues in the Seerist platform, I developed detailed User Personas for its two primary user types - Analyst and Security Manager (Federal) - based on insights from user testing, feedback, and stakeholder input. These personas were used to inform design solutions, ensuring the user experience was tailored to meet the distinct needs of each group.

UX Heuristic Evaluation

Screenshots from Existing Seerist Platform

The Product Manager wanted to keep the current design layout for dropdowns currently in Seerist Search

The Product Manager also wanted the Polygon in Search feature to function exactly as Custom Locations within Seerist Alerts.

First Iteration

Design Option 1: Once a user is within Location Type of Polygons, they can select to either “Create New Polygon,” “Edit Polygons,” or select an existing polygon. This wireframe shows that a user has selected one of their existing polygons from the dropdown “Polygon Name Aa,” which has loaded on the Map.

Design Option 2: Once a user is within Location Type of Polygons, they can either select to “Create New Polygon,” “Find Polygon” in the polygon list that preloads (current design within Seerist Search), or Edit, Delete, or Select a polygon from the preloaded list.

Design Option 3: Once a user is within Location Type of Polygons, they can either select to “Create New Polygon,” “Find Polygon” in the polygon list that preloads (current design within Seerist Search), or Edit, Delete, or Select a polygon from the preloaded list (current design within Seerist Assets).

Feedback from Chief Technology Officer and Development Team

Since the backend development for providing a stored list of user created Polygons was complex, the Requirements for MVP pivoted to only allow a user to Create New Polygon for a Save Search.

Second Iteration

When user selects Polygons within Location Type dropdown, the user only has the option to Create New Polygon, so all buttons and functions previously in the design were removed for MVP. Once the user has followed the directions to Create New Polygon, all feedback and direction loads, which is similar to Seerist Alerts, as required by the Product team. I added an Apply and Cancel button to give the user freedom to finish their New Polygon or to start a different New Polygon.

Once the user has selected Apply, feedback is provided to the user that their New Polygon exists with an close icon so they have the option to delete their New Polygon to start a different one.

Feedback from Chief Technology Officer and Head of Development:

During Development feedback, it was conveyed that the design to show the New Polygon with the close icon was confusing. It was preferred that there were more intuitive buttons indicating “Edit” and “Clear.”

Feedback from Stakeholders

The point came up about the large amounts of explanatory text within the process. Can we please get the designs reworked so that this falls into a tooltip vs embedded in the accordion.

Thought Process

I communicated that hiding Save Search and Save Search As within Saved Queries was confusing. If the user moved down through Search to apply an Event and/or Date Range, it wasn’t intuitive for them to need to go backwards into Saved Queries to Save the Search.

Feedback from Head of Product and Product Manager

Since the Head of User Experience had solved this user experience issue on where to place Save Search Query in a recent project, which was now in the platform’s Test Mode, the product team asked that I incorporate the feature into this project’s prototype.