What is the i2 Portfolio?

The i2 portfolio (part of Safer Planet) produces visual intelligence and investigative analysis software for military, law enforcement and commercial agencies.

You know the old cop shows, where they pin people, places and crimes to a board and connect them with string? Imagine that on the web, connected to the criminal records database, the DMV and more, backed by specialised and highly advanced analytics to aid intelligence production and operational insight. Thats i2.

The Challenges

• Acquistion: i2 doesn’t work like IBM, and has an instilled culture where design has traditionally been a tool to create particular features, rather than impact the product overall; “If your CEO says to do something, even if its wrong, it’s right” 
• Complex Product. After over 20 years of steady functionality growth, and a large product portfolio, i2’s products have become exceptionally powerful, but built up incrementally. Leaving a complex and ‘doctorate’ level offering that is losing ground from its new UX centred competition.
• Classified Users
• Quarterly Release Cycles & Strict Feature Roadmap
  Not only is this a large and potentially bloated product set, the mission from the top is that the web client shall be delivered in quarterly cycles to act as a boost to sales of on premise services. The typical working method with design for i2 has traditionally been the common tale of quick fixes and releasing products based on their features alone. When we started this project, there was a clear ‘visual roadmap’ of which features should be released when.

• Problem with this? Design started almost a full quarter behind.

Imogen
All Source Analyst
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“I need to use all of the tools at my disposal to deliver investigative insight to my team”

Imogen acts as a versatile ‘jack of all trades’ analyst, utilising all tools and data at her disposal across analysis types, focussing mostly on HUMINT (human intelligence), but dabbles across all other typical analysis techniques.

Typically receives RFI’s and outputs reports.

Moorad
SIGINT Analyst
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“I need to leverage huge amounts of signal data such as CDR from data and ad hoc sources”

Also part of the new breed of analyst, Moorad works in large scale enterprise agencies in the military or federal space. He specialises in leveraging giant data sets of signal data (call, cell tower pings, bank transfers etc) to uncover pattern of life and investigative leads for his team.

Receives RFI’s and outputs reports & support.

Sam
Principle Analyst (Manager)
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“I need the ability to watch over and manage my teams of analysts and my missions”

Sam represents what is left from the days of i2’s proliferation and ‘king of the hill’ status. Having undertaken training in i2 software he is both an expert user and a massive proponent of i2 in his organisation.

• Sam receives direction from upper management.
• He is the one who starts and manages missions.
• He tasks his team of analysts and reports its progress upwards and outwards.

Ryan
Investigator (On the streets)
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“I need a place to store all of this information aside from my notebook and somewhere to bring it back so I can better collaborate with the analysts”

In the federal and law enforcement spaces, the analysts aren’t alone, special investigators and detectives are the ones who create the data for each analyst to use. Not technically minded these users would find extreme benefit from a ‘thinner thin client’ of basic functionalities.

• Ryan inputs his data into the system through custom forms.

Quarterly Support

So running with a quarterly release we were in danger of designing feature by feature without knowing the overall context in the user’s experience or our end experience goals. To meet this, a lead and myself formulated a 3 ‘day’ experience scenario for our All source analyst from very basic usage using the most basic analysis techniques (day 1) and bringing in higher level usage abilities such as M.O. comparisons and basic geo searching (day 2) and call data records (day 3). 

Establishing & Stablising the End to End Experience

I worked with another designer to bring this to a medium fidelity keynote storyboard detailing the experience and proposed concepts that fall within in it. Defending the end to end approach against pressure to cut back to feature stories. I then presented this to the entire i2 team for Q3-Q4 scoping as well as in numerous user interviews where it was utilised as a tool for evaluative research. The query experience was chosen as a focal point, and following demonstrates a prototype of the (pre-visual) UX vision.

On Rails Playthroughs

Sometimes, static wireframes alone can’t quite demonstrate the precise and delightful interactions and animations that can be the key to creating up a powerful experience - something I felt each quarter needed for morale.

For this highly detailed animated keynote run-throughs of a user’s journeys, like those in the early projects of design camp served extremely well to inspire the teams to work towards a common goal and level of quality.

Interaction Models

It gets hard to keep aligned around the user experience of a sprawling product such as this, and to keep the same logical model throughout. For the flip side of the equation; the detailed logical questions of the structure of our offering, I maintain a giant .ai file of every stage of the web client, detailing how to reach every other page to ensure there are no experiential gaps.

Radical Cross Location Collaboration

A major challenge stemmed from the majority of the design, development and management resource being situated in Cambridge, difficulties arise from being outside. To combat this, three of us instigated an extremely expedited set of meetings to align and work at a high pace, taking a room in the London Southbank studio and focusing on a deep dive into a single user experience each session. During these we would often create the outline of the work for the next few weeks.