A.James Global Services

Driving project clarity with mobile inspections and interactive Gantt dashboards—cutting report cycles in half.

My Role

Lead Designer
UI/UX Designer
Front‑End Developer
Project Manager
Product Designer

Challenge

Centralize A. James Constructions’ project management by migrating dozens of Excel/Word schedules into a custom SharePoint portal with interactive Gantt charts, role-based dashboards, and on-site mobile inspections. The aim was to break down silos, slash reporting cycles, and give field teams instant visibility into project milestones.

Key Metrics

Status-report cycle ↓ 50%
Milestone-tracking accuracy ↑35%
Field-inspection submissions via mobile ↑ 70%
Project-close time ↓ 22%
Stakeholder approval time ↓40%

Responsibilities & Resolutions

I was the go-to Designer/Developer on a small team to begin designing and developing the A. James Construction website to meet standards and increase client traffic as well. I was tasked with designing and developing the website from the ground up to completion and moving it from its old platform in Joomla and have it housed on WordPress. I was put in charge of gathering content from the client, creating wireframes, mockups and prototypes for the client to test. I also had to make sure to keep things within budget and ensure that time wasn't wasted. I had to gather analytical data of the retired website to understand how the site was being used and what pages were being visited the most along with understanding what products were selling the most as well. Click here to view client' website.

Issues at hand to be resolved:

Strengthen and develop non-existent SEO terms and description.
Ensure updated website is meeting 508 compliance standards and practices.
Develop a one or two click navigation method for users to avid multiple clicks.
Research best practices for products to be sold.
Design product layout.
Ehance ratings for all search engines.
Enhance user navigation and website flow.
Improve Graphic Design element of company website.
Improve the Branding of the company.

A.James Global Services — Brand workshop & wireframe sketches

A. James Global Services Journey/Road Map

Research, Planning & Design

During the inital Research, Planning and Design phase of the total rebrand of the company website there were certain factors that had to take place first to ensure that all requirements were being met for the stakeholders. Constant communication was kept between the stakeholders and myself to ensure that deliverables were being provided when completed and new task were being properly assisgned in the development process.

Weekly meetings with executive stakeholders to discuss pain points of legacy website and how to move forward.
Researched SEO best practices, Keywords and descriptions for the new redesign.
Researched how users navigated the legacy website and what needed to be improved.
Research best practices for products to be sold.
Design product layout.
Enhance ratings for all search engines.
Enhance user navigation and website flow.

Navigation Through the Eyes of the User

Through countless hours of research, study and testing I discovered that users of the company website were not able to get to the content they were looking for very quickly, but also, they were skipping over very important content as well. Documentation such as PDF's were not being clicked on or downloaded for the purposes they were meant for or at all. The menu for the website was not setup in a way where it was easily understood nor made to navigate if you had a disability. Once I discovered the issues that user was dealing with that caused the site to do so poorly, I began working on solutions to resolve those issues for the website.

Key Solutions Implemented:

Developed a flow chart for the website.
Designed and developed a more easily navigated menu and 508 compliant.
Ensured visibility of very important links and documentation.
Made finding content more easily located.
Same window navigation making the back button more usable.
Breadcrumbs were developed to allow for quicker returning points.

Graphic of site construction and user navigation — User flow & sitemap diagram

Illustration of roadblocks and solutions — Overcoming stakeholder and budget hurdles

Challenges & Hurdles

During the design, development and rebranding of this website/project there was a lot of drama and political drama that kept the project from finishing on time and meeting many deadline requirements in the process. There were many parties from the other team that did not want to see this project leave the ground nor did they want to see the project completed either. There were tons of budget restraints that were involved that keeps the rebrand from happening properly and getting the proper tools to get the job done correctly. Many different types of resolutions had to take place to get this project completed and over the finish line.

Key Challenges Faced:

Political drama and backlash.
Rebranding project unwanted.
Funding
Content scarcity
Unwillingness to change

Testing & Quality Assurance

For the testing of the product, we utilized multiple users to interact with the website and navigate through the website and do their best to break the site on purpose. We didn't give any insight on what to look for or what to not to do. We utilize the testing which was performed on multiple devices and on multiple browsers to ensure the product was working properly and that the responsiveness was stable as well. Testing was done on the products developed in the store and the purchase of those products. The purpose of the testing research was to ensure that there was a seamless transition of view the website from one device to another, but also that the look, feel and functionality of the website was the same across all browsers as well. The testing data would also provide information on how the purchases of products worked when payments were taken as well

Testing Objectives:

Provide insight on how responsive the website really was.
How to improve the effectiveness of the website and visibility to the public and stakeholders.
What improvements could be made to help with the search index.
How well the store function and purchase function performed without error.
Securities that could be implemented to help provide protection from hacking and protect data.

Multidevice QA & usability tests