How do you template and manage complex database-driven contracts?
How do you template and manage complex database-driven contracts?
TRADOC G-8 CART:
The Contract Acquisition Requirements Tool
TRADOC G-8 CART:
The Contract Acquisition Requirements Tool
The Contract Acquisition Requirements Tool (CART) is a web application that facilitates development of acquisition requirement documents including the Performance Work Statement (PWS), Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP), and Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE). CART’s modern user interface and structured database allows ease of use for contract creation, standardization and editing. CART was deployed on the customers Microsoft Azure cloud platform in the summer of 2019.
Client
US Army Deputy Chief of Staff, TRADOC G-8
Sector
Agency
Challenge
G-8 contract writers are struggling to quickly create new contracts within a standardized format, and collaborate with other users on multiple contracts simultaneously.
My Role(s)
Research, Product Design
Project Objective
The TRADOC G-8 approached our company with the desire to improve their contract creation process, to transform it into a “more data-centric organization”. This includes several key policy considerations:
1️⃣ Standardize contract creation
2️⃣ Track and reuse successful bid templates (“Gold Star” templates)
3️⃣ Real-time collaboration and auditing
Challenges & Opportunities
🔒 Strict access-control
🔒 Strict access-control
As an army entity, the TRADOC G-8 had strict privacy and security concerns for their contracts and user data.
📝 User-base with limited tech experience
📝 User-base with limited tech experience
Contract-writers were not used to using modern tech for their processes, so we had to make sure our features and functionalities were self-evident. This led to our use of WYSIWYG methods.
⭐ Leveraging “Gold Star” templates
⭐ Leveraging “Gold Star” templates
We had to find a way to provide a robust document library for winning contracts, so users could lift that data into new contracts, making them more likely to be approved.
🧑🤝🧑 Collaboration and auditing
🧑🤝🧑 Collaboration and auditing
Users were finding it difficult to know what contracts were currently being worked on, so we needed to provide an easy way to collaborate without fear of overwriting another user’s work. We introduced editing and reviewing modes, as well as document version history and in-app messaging and commenting.
❓ Niche subject area
❓ Niche subject area
Government contract-writing is not something that the standard Designer or Developer understands, so we had to take some time to understand a lot of their processes, especially the many, many acronyms the US army uses in their day-to-day vernacular.
🫥 Limited UX tools
🫥 Limited UX tools
We had to work with limited access to standard UX tools and development libraries, as the discipline was relatively new to our company and client. (Budgets, right?) This meant crude prototypes.
Research and Requirements Gathering
Working closely with the TRADOC G-8, we mapped intended functionality and user journeys, and brainstormed ways to prototype features quickly.
After client and user research, we determined we had two main types of users.
🧑🏻💻 User Roles:
- Editor
- Reviewer
The product would need to be divided into two main features, with a few supplemental ones to improve workflow.
Main features:
- Form Runner (document/contract editor)
- Documents/Contract manager
- Templates (⭐Gold Star) database
- Collaboration tools
Key Metrics
#️⃣ Newly created contracts
#️⃣ Gold Star templates
#️⃣ Active editors and reviewers
#️⃣ Contract comments
#️⃣ In-app messages
- Loading times
- Contract errors
- Contract-writing completion time (ToT)
- Time to contract award
- Average session length
- Feature adoption
★ North Star ★
The ultimate goal of CART is to improve the contract-writing process, thus:
☆ Increasing the number of winning contracts for TRADOC G-8 ☆
User Journeys & Wireframes
👯♀️ DESIGN TEAM
After determining basic functionalities and user journeys, we started with rough white-board wireframes before digitizing them. During the project timeline, our team developed several additional features for the tool, most of which facilitated team collaboration:
- contract creation WYSIWYG
- document management dashboard
- ⭐ “Gold Star” template library
- contract progress tracker
- user groups
- user-tracked changes
- document versioning
- in-app messenger
- contract comment feed
Mockups & Prototyping
A large portion of my work on this project was in the development of hi-fidelity mockups. At the time, most of our mockups were developed using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe XD. I did some primitive prototyping and animation in Photoshop as well.
Another key task for me was the creation of the tool’s icon library and logo. We did not use a pre-existing library so I had free reign to design this aspect of CART’s visual identity.
We had iconography for various sections and disciplines of the app, including the navigation (sidebar), section and editing tools (document/contract editor), document manager, and user features.
One of my favorite parts of this project was designing and animating the Welcome Wizard. 🧙
Iterating, Auditing & Final Mockups
I also audited ✅ my fellow designers’ and developers’ work, providing markups and other feedback gathered from UX best practices and data from our user tests.
Outcome
After several iterations, we created a tool that largely improved the work lives of the TRADOC G-8 contract writers. 🖊️
Users could now create new documents much more easily than before, especially from convenient access to the “Gold Star” templates. The streamlined, in-app user collaboration features vastly improved reviewing/auditing workflow. Not to toot our own horn, but one of the highest-ranking officials at TRADOC stated in a product review, “this is the best tool to come out of TRADOC in 15 years.” 🥳
The project was deployed on the client’s Microsoft Azure cloud platform in the summer of 2019.
