User Working Group

Summary:

Puckboard was created for Aircrew Schedulers within Air Mobility Command, specifically the C-17 Airframe. We’d like to expand to other USAF instillations, including the Combat Air Forces.

Proposal: Implement a User Working Group to receive regular feedback from a more diverse pool of participants.

This effort will expand our user base to include more airframes and installations while alleviating our Customer Experience Managers from finding referrals for feedback sessions.

Note: The User Working Group refers to an Enlisted Assignment Working Group. This consists of of active-duty enlisted Airmen from a variety of ranks, bases and careers dedicated to analyzing policies and processes limiting modernization of the program, while finding efficiencies and areas for improvement.

Current State:

The Puckboard User Working Group was launched in August 2023!

We have over 90 members from more than 21 installations across the United States Air Force. A range of aircrew members from various duty positions and ranks join each session. Each session planned based on our product roadmap. Sessions are hosted via Microsoft Teams every month to gather design feedback.

We’re working to improve the Puckboard User Working Group every month with retrospectives and general feedback.

Initial State:

Participants are sourced by:

Referrals from the Customer Experience Managers or Air Mobility Command Stakeholders
Volunteering via Mattermost Chat Application when they see a new feature is released
Most referrals were the following roles within the C-17 community:
- Instructor, Evaluator and Mission Pilots
- Instructor, Evaluator and Mission Loadmasters
- Schedulers
- Squadron Aviation Resource Management (SARM/HARM)
- Assistant Director of Operations (ADO)
- Maintenance (MX Debrief)

Some issues with this current process are:

Participants are often blocked or unprepared because of equipment (they borrow a squadron computer or don’t have access to our product)
Participants are blocked from camera or video due to squadron restrictions and it’s hard to conduct a user interview
Participants direct user feedback sessions back to bugs or other issues, designers are not able to get the feedback needed to iterate on their current sprint goal

Initial Feedback Process

FigJam workflow that display the current state of the User Experience Feedback Loop (at the time of the proposal for the User Working Group).

Proposed Feedback Process to include User Working Group

FigJam workflow that displays the Ideal / Future state of User Experience Feedback with the implementation of the User Working Group.

Outcomes:

Set up a User Working Group to expand participant the pool outside of Air Mobility Command C-17 Community
Spread more awareness about Puckboard products and services
Implement a better practice of Human Centered Design
Adopt a tool that has been verified for all units (MS Teams) to unblock technical constraints

Results:

Alleviate Customer Experience team from multiple streams of communication
Build a more diverse pool of users - more unbiased, reliable user research
Ability to scale the group and support more participants
Create a more effective customer experience

Feedback Process :

FigJam workflow that displays the improved Feedback Loop.

Session Format:

Pre Session:

Check in with Project Managers to understand upcoming sprint goals.
Post message in Mattermost or Microsoft Teams channel to target specific group members and communicate the goal for this month.

During Session:

Intro designers, CX team members and participants.
Gather design feedback for specific feature.
Q&A.

Post Session:

Post recording and narrative points in teams channel.
Reach out to participants for feedback sessions as needed.
Synthesize findings and conduct retrospective.