European Commission

The European Commission is the politically independent executive arm of the European Union in charge of promoting its general interests by helping to shape strategy, proposing and enforcing legislation, as well as implementing EU policies and budget. 

It also plays an important role in supporting international development and delivering aid. It is an extensive website with large amounts of content that provides information to 20 million visitors per month in 24 languages about its activities in fields such as EU legislation, standards, treaties, judgments, research and innovation, financing, grants , education and training. EU strategy, political priorities, environmental protection and many other topics.

AMONG OTHER PROJECTS I HAVE WORKED ON:

Redesigning events organisation

The European Commission and its partners organise events with different levels of complexity. 

The main objective of this project was to make it easier for the user to search for the right events on the European Commission website and to obtain information as clearly as possible to allow them to attend such events. 

The biggest challenge on this project was to provide a simple interface for the wide variety of types of available events: taking place in one or more locations, in a time slot or in several, with free access or with prior booking, free or paid, etc… All this with different states like: scheduled, rescheduled, canceled and closed events.

Improving and refining the search tool

In a large organisation with the size of the European Commission it is crucial to have a solid information architecture but also a powerful and flexible search tool to help citizens find the information and services they need at any moment. 

An important point was to distinguish between file types, date, institution and other specific parameters. In summary, there was a real need to redesign the European Commission search tool to provide a flexible, intuitive, fast and easy-to-use search function that would allow users to find relevant and accurate information on the European Commission website, for mobile and desktop devices. .

Language tool

Creation of language tool concept to allow users to browse the EC website in the 24 official languages and other external languages for some specific documents (Chinese, Russian, Indian,…).

  • This task had several complications:
  • Cookies could not be used, due to the privacy policies of the EC.
  • There were huge differences in the level of translation of each language, with almost 100% of the content available in English but only 30% or 40% in other languages such as French or German, etc…
  • EU and foreign languages could not be mixed because the core interface was only translated into EU languages.


It was necessary to find a way to allow users to search content in their preferred language as a priority, but if not available, then allow to easily switch to another language.

How I was approaching those projects

After having gathered all the relevant information from researchers to understand needs, pain points and expectations from both, users and stakeholders, the next usual step was conducting a competitive analysis to identify some good practices in how other similar organisations around the world were managing search.

Analysing all the material from EC researchers and user testing sessions done with the current search tool, we was able to identify pain points and opportunities to improve the user experience.

After that I started to créate mobile first concepts and share them with colleagues. Collaborating with the usability team to test them as son as possible getting valuable feedbacks to refine the initial designs.

My Work

Once received the first project brief, my first action was to collect relevant information that would help me empathize and understand the needs and expectations of both users and the institution. This information was provided to me by the researchers, with whom I had sessions and workshops to understand the problem to be solved in all its breadth. Researchers also provided me with stored test sessions with  users, which allowed me to identify pain points and opportunities to improve the user experience. 

After processing all the information, one of the next steps was to start creating mobile concepts. Collaborating with the usability team to test them as soon as possible with real users, to be able to analyze the results and draw conclusions that will help to refine those concepts. 

In this iterative way, it was possible to eliminate or considerably reduce usability and accessibility problems that could have complicated the development phase. Using an agile approach, work was distributed and organized on the JIRA platform in two-week sprints. 

Based on my previous research, I usually came up with two or three design concepts and presenting them to the stakeholders to help them make a decision.

SKILLS

Requirements gathering, design thinking, concept generation, sketching, wireframing, prototyping, user testing.

TOOLS

Sketch, Axure, JIRA, Confluence, Photoshop, Illustrator, scrum & agile methodologies.

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