Petroleum Economics and Policy Solutions
Petroleum Economics and Policy Solutions (PEPS), part of IHS Markit’s client subscription based Energy Portal, is a web based service for benchmarking country specific risk ratings and rankings relevant to the petroleum industry. It enjoys a solid reputation in terms of data accuracy and reliability, but subscribers frequently report difficulties actually finding pertinent ratings and rankings, and of poor navigability in general - a consequence of the technology-first approach taken on the portal’s initial implementation.
Challenges and Opportunities
While PEPS’s competitors do not offer the same breadth of benchmarking background and are considered less solid in general, both feature superior data presentation and navigation paths. This situation leaves PEPS vulnerable to subscriber migration to more well-presented and therefore less time-consuming services.
We set out to address that threat, specifically the following facets:
Poor information architecture and unclear navigation structures make information hard to find.
Once found, the information presentation itself is poorly structured and therefore hard to consume.
PEPS has crosslinks to other services under the Energy Portal umbrella, which poses certain problems. Consumers who do not subscribe to these other services are left with dead ends. Those with universal access to the linked offerings still face unclear return paths. Neither experience inspires much confidence in the PEPS offering.
The Project and my Role
The PEPS offering and its reputation of reliability have been around since 1993, which helps to explain why PEPS’s newly appointed product manager - previously a consumer of the product in a business analyst role - encountered understandable cautiousness when proposing changes his internal stakeholders found hard to envision and feared to be too drastic.
At the same time, the product needed a deeper approach than a mere facelift.
As user experience architect on the project I therefore provided initial consultation on improvements to information architecture and interaction patterns, and confirming via user tests that a new solution would align better to consumer goals. My objective was to ready the refactored IA and high level interaction concept for a UI design group to take over and implement as they deemed fit, without my being overly prescriptive. This had to fit a short timeframe: UXA deliverables had to be selective, purposeful, sparse and to the point.
Deliverables
Diagrams of PEPS’s existing and new information architecture to ensure that crucial user experience architecture elements do not get compromised.
Documented analysis of status-quo navigation and interaction paths to provide a rationale for refactoring.
Clickable, interactive mockup geared to a few, typical wayfinding exercises with authentic users.
Existing Information Architecture
The following diagram illustrates how PEPS fits under IHS Markit’s Energy Portal umbrella with common login (annotation 1), alongside fifteen other information service offerings (2). The five services to which PEPS has direct crosslinks are highlighted (3); the remainder is shown ghosted. PEPS’s own home. page content (4) is currently presented in the form of summary headings (represented by the four-tile symbol), body text, tables, and occasionally, graphic charts.
Analysis / Critique of Current Presentation and Navigation Paths
The following summarises potentially problematic areas the exisiting navigation structure. Even where navigation and wayfinding is not compromised outright, some navigation flows, control patterns and overall layout fail to convey a general sense of ease, authority, reliability and un-fussiness. In other words, while users may not run into manifest fundability problems the ‘big picture’ is conducive to an overall impression of a lack of finesse.
This subscription is expensive! Give people not just their money’s worth, but end-to-end reassurance that it is never misspent. It’s the equivalent of the confidence inspiring thud of the closing BMW door (which engineers and designers at that manufacturer unquestionably research thoroughly), and the smooth handling and acceleration that give the visceral sense of uncompromised quality. These things are not chance artifacts. Nor should 21st-century software behaviour be!
Three Interaction Design Schemes, and Data Comparison Studies
Selection of Wireframes from Interactive Mockup
This is a further exploration of the dashboard-drilldown concept. Top-level rankings and ratings of a geographical region of interest is presented alongside a newsfeed and pertinent financial trends. If this is the information subscribers look for first and foremost, don’t have them hunt for it.
Retractable Navigation Panel and Numerical Ratings / Rankings Presentation on Hover
Pull out the navigation tool when needed; retract when done to focus on the information. Get an overall sense of country risk ratings by category from the depth of (monochrome!) hue first, and review exact numbers by hovering over a tile of interest. Click a country to view the top level rating plus three subcategory ratings (not shown); drill down further from here.
