Visitor Management System
The Ask
My team was one of four teams tasked with designing a comprehensive visitor management system for a hypothetical high-security facility. We were responsible for visitor services, which included the welcome desk and waiting area. This was a class project in the UCLA Extension User Experience program.
Project: Welcome desk components for a visitor management system
Primary role: Project manager
Skills: Project management, wire framing, user research
Tools: Figma, Miro, teleconferencing, video conferencing
Outcome: Service blueprint and interactive prototype
Leadership and Collaboration
Team members had limited face time with each other, so we worked remotely in large part. Our initial action was to assign specified primary and secondary roles to each team member. As project manager, I first helped team members define their roles based on their existing strengths and personal goals for the project. Once the project got off the ground, I coordinated and led all conference calls and remote working sessions. I organized our filing system and helped team members stay on pace with their weekly goals. In addition to my primary role as project manager I collaborated on user research and interface design.
Research and Planning
We approached our initial research phase from three sides simultaneously: we ran a competitive analysis of six visitor management system vendors, conducted field research in facilities with VMS’s, and held interviews with our building security professional contact. From this research we compiled an exhaustive checklist of the physical and digital requirements our areas of responsibility would need to meet.
In conversation with the primary stakeholder, the subject matter expert, and other colleagues, I determined the data and network integration requirements my team needed to satisfy to ensure the success of our sector and that of the larger VMS. In collaboration with teammates, I identified primary and secondary use cases.
Building from our research we drew up service blueprints to visualize the design problem and help us identify secondary and contingency use cases not specified in the original brief.
With limited time and few opportunities to work face-to-face, I organized a remote working session for the team in which we used rapid sketching to brainstorm ideas for how to resolve the project’s various facets. Team members sketched on paper and uploaded the results to the team’s Miro board for explanation, discussion and selection of elements we would incorporate into our solution.
Problem Solution
Our research and preparatory findings pointed to four distinct but interconnected problem areas that our team needed to address.
- Application design
- Physical design
- Network integration
- Data requirements
We set about designing both the interior of the welcome building and the personnel/visitor badges with an eye to how the larger VMS was embedded in the physical space of the facility. Our building design had opened sight lines from the welcome desk both through the building’s interior as well as externally to the facility security gate and guest parking area. All persons in the facility would be required to wear badges with RFID tags for tracking visitors’ locations while in the facility. We created a bold color-coded classification scheme for badges so security personnel could easily identify people’s access-levels at a distance: blue for employees, green for contractors, red for visitors.
The desktop application at welcome desk required information on all persons with access to the facility including employees, contractors, and visitors, as well as people prohibited from facility grounds. Among data required were day and time of appointment, reason for visit, contact person, government identification, and personal contact information.
The welcome desk also served as a hub for monitoring all aspects of the VMS, which required integrating data sharing across VMS sectors, visual and electronic monitoring, as well as company-wide notification and alert functionality.
The primary element in our solution was the desktop application for welcome desk personnel. We had to ensure that the application dashboard provided direct access to all frequently used features and that the user interface would be intuitive for non-expert users and recently trained personnel. The application needed to allow personnel to track visitors throughout their time in the facility, to receive notifications and security alerts, and to contact employees and security personnel located across the facility.
Prototype Development
Wire framing and Initial Prototype
In our initial prototype wireframes we built the primary tool area of dashboard within a 3/4-toolbar frame. At the top we created a search bar, an icon for the employee contact information, a notification/alert icon, and a user account tab. We put the primary navigation in a permanently visible left-hand sidebar. At the bottom we included space for real-time statistics for all persons in the facility.
The primary dashboard area was designed so that staff would know at a glance what visitors to be expecting and the status and location of visitors currently in the facility.
Prototype Revision
In our stakeholder review we realized that we had given too much dashboard real estate to non-essential features and as a result were limited in the amount of information that could be displayed about visitors.
The primary goal in our revision was to make the dashboard both easier to read and more information-rich. We combined the two visitor modules into one expanded list with two displays—one for upcoming scheduled visitors and one for visitors currently on site. Records for visitors were made expandable so that additional visit information, e.g. contact person, could be easily accessed without navigating away from primary list.
Additional modifications combined the top and bottom toolbars, streamlined the options in the left-hand side bar, and minimized secondary-order dashboard modules.
User Testing
Once we had incorporated the design revision we created a clickable prototype and ran a series of usability tests to measure the effectiveness of the desktop application prototype.
Test results were mixed. The most essential tasks—checking visitors in and out—were successfully completed. However, the more complicated tasks such as extending the duration of visitor’s stay and finding detailed visitor records gave users much more trouble.
We then identified five changes that would help address the weaknesses exposed through user testing; however, the project concluded before another round of revisions could be made.
