CASE STUDY - 2022
DebtBook
Large Export Notifications
Notifications for large exports in-app and by email when a file requested is ready to download.
MY ROLE
UX Designer - Discovery, User Research, Design
TEAM
Patrick Neugebauer - Developer
Justin Risedorf - Product Manager
Brendan Mannion - Finance Product and Enablement
Documents Storage View
Bucket View (Export Data Flow)
PROBLEM
Files that are generated through a report, export or bulk download bundle are created using a background job and in most cases they appear to download automatically. However, larger exports may take more than one minute and be emailed to the user. These may be blocked due to size/type limitations and may present a security concern as they persist in a user’s inbox unprotected. Really large exports or potential bulk file downloads needed to be broken down into multiple parts.
User Journey
As a User...
- I am notified in-app and by email when a file I requested is ready to download.
- I can view a list of exports I’ve generated.
- The list of exports I’ve generated is organized by time .
- I can download exports that I’ve generated.
- Exports I’ve generated are auto-expired after 30 days.
Additional Considerations
After gathering information we continued to review the scope of our problem. We had to ask some additional questions. From that point we met with development. Would the multiple files be zipped? Yes. If so, no need to support the selection of individual files. Next we had an initial design that involved a dedicated page, but we thought that a flyover would be a better first version in the interim. Dedicated page versus a flyover? No. Devs confirmed that relative effort, so we decided to proceed with the flyover. Should we handle all downloads through this workflow (even those that are immediate)? No. Reason is increased scope and complexity. Some other considerations were: Clear all versus clear selected, use of informative notification labels, and when the job is still running after 20 sec, a second toast notifies the user that the file will be emailed.
TOASTS
We already had standards in place for toasts. This includes an in progress and a export completed toast. With the addition of the large exports we has to add a second toast to show the download was preparing. Also an error toast for instances where the download failed.
A toast shows that the download is being prepared (in progress state).
When the job is still running after 60 sec, a second toast notifies the user that the file will be emailed.
If there is an error, a toast appears in red to indicate there was a problem generating the export.
DRAWER
We realized that the drawer design was limited and obstructive since we also have a chat bot that is in the right bottom corner.
V.1 Exports Generated (Drawer)
FLYOVER
This was our first iteration with the flyover design. We wanted to make a scalable solution for notifications down the road. We added a notification bell to our navigation bar. This was the most feasible option in the interim as far as the workload was concerned from the development side.
V.2 Exports Generated (Flyover)
FLYOVER FINAL
Taking into account zip files, clear all versus clear selected and useful notification labels we cleaned up our initial flyover with version 2.
V.3 Exports Generated (Flyover) Final
Flow 1: Large export download from Documents page
Flow 2: Export Data
Outcome
This is one small part of a larger, ongoing project. Since this is quite big with multiple parts, we saw the need to break apart early on and create an epic. This was very helpful to our team and an improvement on how we tackle projects like this one. This is currently being worked on by our development team.