{"id":32252,"date":"2023-09-21T16:13:02","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T20:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/its-cuthemedev1.carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/?post_type=cu_story&p=32252"},"modified":"2025-03-24T15:29:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T19:29:05","slug":"designing-solutions-how-good-design-transformed-a-support-portal","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/story\/designing-solutions-how-good-design-transformed-a-support-portal\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing Solutions for Better User Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n
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\n Designing Solutions for Better User Experience\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n \n

Ty Burke<\/em><\/p>\n \n

In celebration of Carleton University\u2019s 2023 Throwback<\/span> week<\/span>\u2013a homecoming for alumni and community members\u2013we sat down with seven alumni to see where they are now. Their stories moved us and reminded us of the impact our engineering and design alumni <\/span>have on creating technology for good, sustainability, health and wellness, and social innovation.
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Designing Solutions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Good design can prevent big problems.  One of Canada\u2019s provincial governments was operating a portal for people seeking overdue child and spousal support, and it wasn\u2019t going well. Users were frustrated and staff were burning out. Carleton alumna Sara Fortier\u2019s company Outwitly helped fix its problems by completely redesigning the system. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCase workers would get calls from angry people who hadn\u2019t received their support payment,\u201d says Fortier, the CEO and founder of the UX and service design consultancy.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sara Fortier, CEO, Outwitly, industrial design alumna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople depend on these payments, and case workers were getting burnt out because they received so many calls. It created a huge burden.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outwitly conducted discovery research to better understand the problems. They made recommendations to improve the portal by enabling users to see the status of their payment, and to optimize its user experience on mobile phones. This was particularly important because many portal users didn\u2019t have laptops. But some design insights were even simpler. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany users didn\u2019t understand the call centre\u2019s function. They thought they have a lot more power than they do, and when a payment didn\u2019t arrive, they\u2019d call five times a day. That places a lot of burden on workers,\u201d says Fortier, a graduate of the Bachelor of Industrial Design and Master of Design programs.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, Fortier and Outwitly devised a solution to help get call volume down. One of their recommendations was for better educational materials to help users better understand how the system worked.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA better onboarding program tells people about the program. It sets expectations up front, and really changes a lot about their experience.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortier credits the Master of Design program as a major stepping stone.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI did a Bachelor of Industrial Design, but by the time I finished, I knew I didn\u2019t want to design physical products,\u201d says Fortier.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Master of Design really got into design thinking, and applied the design process not just to physical things, but to digital experiences. I really fell in love with that side of design.\u201d <\/span>
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\nWant to participate in Carleton\u2019s 2023 Throwback events? Visit the <\/span>alumni website to learn more.<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ty Burke In celebration of Carleton University\u2019s 2023 Throwback week\u2013a homecoming for alumni and community members\u2013we sat down with seven alumni to see where they are now. Their stories moved us and reminded us of the impact our engineering and design alumni have on creating technology for good, sustainability, health and wellness, and social innovation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32255,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[249,193,250],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-32252","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-alumni","cu_story_type-feature-stories","cu_story_type-graduate"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/32252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/32252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32325,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/32252\/revisions\/32325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=32252"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/engineering-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=32252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}