CCRS REDESIGN PROJECT 2014
Tackling Complexity: Simplifying and Surfacing Information

Approximately 800,000 users worldwide

Project Feedback

“Thank you so much for all of the work you have put into this. I think we have a chance of this being really successful because of your ideas and ability to take my requirements and translate them into a well laid out solution. ”

— PMI Business Analyst

“Critical resource ... High caliber... Great design work.”

— PMI Project Manager

Old CCRS Dashboard Design

First CCRS Dashboard Iteration

Old Enter A PDU

Proposed Change PDU Wizard

Old Claims Detail

New Claims Detail

What is PMI?

The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world’s largest not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession. They offer 7 certifications that recognize knowledge and competency. The most popular is the Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential held by more than 590,000 practitioners worldwide.

What is CCRS?

Once a person attains a certification, they must engage in professional development activities in 3 year cycles in order to maintain their certification. The Continuing Certification Renewal guidelines detail how to maintain certification and CCRS is the online application that certificate holders use to submit their professional development activities/units (PDU's) and track the status of their approval and the status of their certification.

Purpose of the CCRS Redesign Project:

Credential holders needed an intuitive system that allowed them to easily enter claims for PDU’s, understand their current state against the cycle requirements, and search the directory for PDU-eligible activities. The program also introduced additional education requirements for leadership and strategy to help credential holders advance their careers.

If you would like to read the business requirements click here. If you would like to learn more about the complexities of the project goals, I would be happy to explain more in person.

Problem Frame

The current CCRS has a series of issues that prevent it from being the intuitive and informative system users need.

Entering PDUs

Entering a claim is difficult because users are unsure to which category a claim belongs. This currently leads to claims being rejected.
Users cannot edit claims to correct errors once submitted.
Users will need to understand the new education requirements (Talent Triangle) for submitting PDUs.

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT SYSTEM :

PDU Requirements

This is the breakdown of the new PDU requirements. which includes the new Education: Talent Triangle requirements.

In addition, the user needs to understand what activities count toward meeting these requirements, and they need assistance finding the activities they may be interested in and may help advance their career.

Select Category

Users have difficulty determining which category applies to their activity, resulting in user error.

Category caps information is not helpful to users because it is contained in an external file.

Category Requirements

Includes ALL certification requirements. Not just information relevant to specific user profile or status.

Does not create mental model of requirements to encourage recall.

RESULT: Increases confusion and cognitive overload.
Does not increase user knowledge and understanding.

PDU Claims

There are complicated rules involving PDUs that are transferred to the next cycle. The current claim details do not clearly show the cycle to which their claims are applied.
The current system silos claims based on certification and approved, pending, rejected. If you have several certifications it's not easy or quick to get an overview of what PDU's are approved and where they have been applied.
Some PDU's count for more than one certification. The current system does not show the user where and how the PDUs are applied. This prevents the user from confirming that they have been applied correctly. (and it misses an opportunity to create a mental model.)

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT SYSTEM :

Claim Detail

Transcript link is provided but information should be easily accessible in interface.

How are these category labels helpful? Are they relevant PDU requirements?

This user has earned more PDUs than necessary. What cycle are they being applied to?

Transcript

A downloadable document provides information about PDUs that have been transferred. But it only provides the amount, not which PDUs or for what reason they were transferred, or to what cycle they were tranferred to.

Certification Status

Users can only see their total PDUs per certification. They do not see their totals for Education or Giving Back despite the minimum and maximum requirements for each dependent on primary or secondary certification, and that these requirements have recently changed.
Users are not reminded when their certifications are nearing suspension and expiration.
The interface does not indicate when users have renewed early and are earning PDUs in the next cycle.

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT SYSTEM :

PDU Status

System only shows total PDUs for each certification.

Search

Directory search options are not clear and easily understood.
Lacks filter and sorting capabilities users need to pinpoint relevant search results within a very large database with difficult to differentiate results.

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT SYSTEM :

Search

Users had difficulty understanding how to select and activate search options.

There were not enough filter options to pinpoint relevant search results in a vast database.

Overall

Requirements for maintaining certification and how PDUs are applied are not clear to users.
Users do not know of the many options they have for fulfilling their PDU's.
The application does not have responsive design.

Design Goals

Improve ease of use of claims submission process, create the ability to manage claims independently of customer service, and design new features to increase transparency of certification status and CCR business logic.