Phase I: Analyzing Users, Competitors, and Initial Designs

Introduction

BetterTicket is an IT ticketing system management service designed to improve efficiency and transparency of IT support services. We are trying to address limited communication and vagueness of ticket updates. As well as simplify ticketing user interface interaction. In Phase I, the team conducted competitive analyses and heuristic evaluation to identify common pain points for users and identify core features that work. We soon developed user personas and scenarios and low-fidelity sketches and diagrams to better understand user need and establish initial designs focused on simplicity and usability. Adhering to the constantly changing atmosphere of user needs.

Methods

The team performed several research methods to understand similar applications, potential users, and identify improvements for BetterTicket. Some of the methods explored are competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, and creation of personas and scenarios for finding improvements in design for user experience.

The first research method we conducted is the competitive analysis where it analyzed the strengths, weaknesses, quality, price, and form of platform used for IT support systems through research and selected four different competitors: Chico State IT Support and CatBot, Zendesk, Kayako, and Freshdesk. We also analyzed different features available related to Artificial Intelligence integration, AI and automated response, ticket updates and management, cost of operation, integration, organization using at enterprise level, university, office, etc., and related information which identifies useful features and current limitations that need to be addressed, which could be improved with the design of BetterTicket.

The second research conducted through individual ratings (from 1-10 where 1 = Poor Score and 10 = Excellent Score) was heuristic evaluation. Our team explored the four competitors selected in the competitive analysis and selected Zendesk to evaluate the design, overall usability, in-depth testing of both user and IT team environment to discover areas for improvement through individual scoring and reasoning for each heuristic. The following heuristics were used in our evaluation:

• Visibility of System Status
• Match between system and the real world
• User control and freedom
• Consistency and standards
• Error prevention
• Recognition rather than recall
• Flexibility and efficiency of use
• Aesthetic and minimalist design
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
• Help and documentation

After finishing the individual evaluation and scoring, the heuristic scores were compared with reasoning behind to come to a common score for each heuristic.

The third method we used was creation of personas and scenarios to better understand potential BetterTicket users about how they would interact with the system, with different backgrounds, goals, challenges faced by the users. For each individual persona, a scenario was created to show how they would interact with the IT support system, delayed response during time-sensitive situations, and technical issues faced such as VPN issues, needing access to old account information, and getting access to software. We included what they need or want to accomplish to better understand different users.

Findings

Through our competitive analysis, our team found that the four IT ticketing systems that we researched had different strengths and weaknesses when it came to AI integration, ticket management, pricing and its overall usability. Chico State IT support and CatBot provided helpful information through its knowledge base and guided users through its common issues, but lacked authentication, which does raise some security concerns. Kayako offered AI ticketing services and implementation support but it lacked self service configuration and required custom pricing. Zendesk provided useful features such as Ai powered responses, ticket analytics, and automation, but its pricing and complicated workflows does make it difficult for some organizations to use. Freshdesk was easier to set up and a lot more affordable, although some advanced features required a higher priced plan. Overall our team found that these existing IT ticketing systems proved many useful features, but there are still things to improve such as the simplicity, accessibility, and its cost.

Through the heuristic evaluation, our team examined Zendesk closely to understand its usability from both the user and IT staff perspectives. Zendesk performed well in its consistency and its standards, receiving a score of 9/10 from all three members. Its consistent buttons, tabs and its layout made the system easier to navigate. We also found that Zendesk provided useful features such as required fields, saved ticket information, and customizable workflows. However the visibility of system status received lower scores of 7/10 and 8/10 because regular users weren’t given detailed updates about their ticket progress while the IT staff could view more information. We also noticed that Zendesk had many features and settings that could make the interface a bit complicated for some users. Regular users have fewer options for managing their tickets compared to IT staff, which makes it harder to track their requests. These findings showed our team that clear ticket updates, simple navigation, and better communication should be important features when designing BetterTicket.

Through personas and scenarios, we were able to successfully identify issues, needs, and goals of potential users of BetterTicket IT helpdesk system, and the features that are important for their experience. Due to varied types of scenarios, it was discovered that IT staff would need a simpler way to manage tickets without clutter, which is each to understand. For students, faculty, and employees, there is a time-based need due to deadlines, need for access to resources, and support to address technical issues which affects their overall workflow. In addition, guest persona findings go in detail about accessibility of systems for former-affiliated students or faculty and other users outside a community, especially when they need help recovering account access or retrieving old files. These findings helped us understand different user needs that needs to be addressed such as accessibility, organized ticket tracking, faster response, and support available for different types of users.

Conclusions

Based on our competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, and personas and scenarios, our team found that existing IT ticketing systems have useful features but there are still things that could be improved. One of the main issues we noticed was the lack of detailed ticket updates for regular users. While IT staff could view and manage ticket information, regular users were only given limited information about the progress of their requests. For BetterTicket, we want to focus on providing clearer ticket statuses, progress updates, and detailed explanations when an issue has been resolved.

Through our competitive analysis, we also found that AI integration and automation could help make ticket management more efficient. However, some systems had complicated interfaces or required higher-priced plans to access certain features. We want BetterTicket to have a simpler interface while still providing useful features such as automated responses, organized ticket management, and easy access to support information. Our heuristic evaluation also showed us that having consistent navigation, required fields, and clear error messages are important to help prevent mistakes when using the system.

From our personas and scenarios, our team learned that different users have different needs when it comes to IT support. Students, faculty, and employees may need faster responses to avoid interruptions with their work, while IT staff need an organized system to manage tickets more easily. We also found that guest users may need support when recovering accounts or trying to retrieve important files. These findings showed our team that BetterTicket should be able to support different types of users while keeping the ticketing process simple and easy to understand.

Overall, Phase I helped our team understand what users may need from an IT ticketing system and what improvements could be made. Moving forward, we want to use these findings to help guide our designs and focus on making BetterTicket a simpler, more organized, and user-friendly IT ticketing system for both users and IT support staff.

Caveats

Some of the limitations that we faced in our research was limited selection of existing IT ticketing systems. While we do have many competitors we chose a select few to gather insights from. Our findings may not represent every feature or approach available in the market. In our heuristic evaluations were based on our team's assessment of competing systems. Our findings may be subjective as not all sizes fit all. Different users may experience usability issues differently. We had limited direct user feedback meaning that some of the assumptions about user preferences still need to be validated through user testing.