Company and Product Overview
Cast & Crew is the leading provider of payroll and other related services to the entertainment industry. As one of the legacy companies in the field, they have had a robust workflow to intake new projects. However, it relied entirely on forms being sent back and forth between the clients and the onboarding team. However, after 2020, as the company realized the importance of a smooth digital workflow for onboarding clients, they decided to make a significant investment in moving on from the stopgap measure of using PDF versions of paper forms.
The new web app will be a one stop portal for the project intake process
The new web app will be a one stop portal for the project intake process
Problem Statement
The different paper forms and their PDF counterparts are an inelegant and rigid way to onboard projects of different types. The process needs to be made faster and more dynamic allowing users to skip portions of the form that don’t apply to them
Goal
Have users self serve themselves by signing up and submitting project intake requests while providing as much important information as possible.
Target Audience
The first target audience for this is all the executives in the studios who have been working with Cast & Crew to submit projects using the forms in paper or PDF forms.
While these professionals are comfortable with technology in general, this part of their job would be changing in some ways.
While these professionals are comfortable with technology in general, this part of their job would be changing in some ways.
Design Process
The design process was started with a lot of wireframing in figjam to get a big picture of the process and sections of the forms. I came into the project after the first set of wireframes were completed by a departing product designer. After some more iterations, these wireframes would be presented to stakeholders at regular intervals to ensure quick iterations. Once an overview of all the forms and the architecture of all the types of data recorded was established, a clickable prototype was built. After first round of usability studies, we applied the insights gleaned to a high fidelity mockup. After the high fidelity mockup was vetted with the stakeholders, a high fidelity prototype was created for a final round of usability study to validate the design.
User Research
In order to maintain a level of discretion about the development of this functionality, a lot of the research involved talking to internal teams who are responsible for interfacing with clients during the project submission process. Notes of the pain points and previously filled forms were studied. User research was also leveraged later in the design stage by conducting usability study of a wire prototype(Axure) with stakeholders. I prepared a study plan, moderated the study and created reports of the findings. After the high fidelity mockups were completed, I also planned and executed a usability study of a high fidelity prototype(Axure) with select external users.
User Flow
We broke up some of the really long PDF forms into individual sections for an ideal user flow. The sections were laid out in an order understood to be ideal based on the different stages a project goes through. But we also wanted the users to be able to skip to other sections, fill out what they know and save their progress.
This was also going to allow us to reduce the number of times user has to enter common information across what used to be multiple forms going to different departments.
Projects tab inside user's MyCast&Crew account
Empty state for a new user
User with previously submitted projects
Responsive design turns individual icons to a kebab menu
Mobile layout
Form experience
