Canary Comment System

Project Introduction

Our 4-person team designed and implemented a comment management system for 27 libraries in the Seattle Public Library system. The purpose of the project is to collect, manage, and save the communication between patrons and staff in the Seattle Public library and improve library patrons’ experience in the library. By creating a homegrown correspondence management system, it will not only help with timeliness and accountability in responding to patron comments but automate the workflow between staff and leadership in the Seattle Public library.

Design Goal

It was a pain for the staff to find and manage enormous comments from patrons everyday. The comments come from different channels e.g. the comment forms, calls, emails and chat at front desk. A lot of those comments need to be resolved or taken actions in time. Also resolving those comments may require different stakeholders participance. One of the design goals is to use this tool to help library staff improve the efficiency of managing those comments.

Solution

A centralized system will help library staff improve the efficiency of managing those comments. That's why we come up with the idea of designing this standalone, centralized system to collect, store, manage, and share comments.

After interviewing some staff in the library, we came up with the idea of categorizing and staging those comments. The category will give users an idea what the comment is about. And assigning status for each comment will help to expose the comments which get stuck in the process and call to actions. Whenever users create a comment, there will be multiple metadata associated with each comment created at the same time. Users later can filter out the comments using those metadata.

Process

• User interview
• Brainstorming
• Stakeholder reviews R1 - concept
• Sketches/Wireframes + Preliminary web development
• Stakeholder reviews R2 - feature scope and design review
• Usability testing session 1
• Finalize wireframes + Web development
• Usability testing session 2
• Poster + Develop landing page