Enterprise Public-Facing and Administrative Application
Platform: Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet
Overview
The eIDP provides an electronic workflow for NCI trainees (fellows) to create and submit their Individual Development Plans (IDPs). The system automatically routes the IDPs to their primary mentor, additional mentors, Training Director, and Lab, Branch, or Office Chief/Director for review and approval. Additionally, the system allows Administrative Officers (AOs) to ensure that trainees complete their IDPs annually in a timely manner, streamlining the overall process.
Goals
- Replace the current manual, paper-based process, which is time-consuming and inefficient.
- Provide an electronic workflow to support NCI-funded Postdoctoral Fellows and CRTAs across NCI organizations, allowing them to create, complete, and route IDPs to mentors for review and feedback.
- Enable efficient and consistent management of IDPs, ensuring compliance with NCI guidelines.
- Streamline the review and approval process with a transparent workflow.
- Track the real-time status of IDPs throughout the approval process.
- Provide automated alerts and notifications to improve efficiency and ensure timely actions.
- Maintain electronic records of IDP forms for easy search and retrieval.
- Incorporate built-in reporting capabilities for key IDP data elements.
- Support an “Exit Interview” survey for trainees to provide feedback.
Problems
- The paper-based process is inefficient and time-consuming.
- Limits interactive collaboration between trainees (fellows), mentors, and program management teams.
- Reduces program managers' ability to evaluate trainee involvement in completing IDPs or assess mentoring effectiveness.
- Lacks efficiency in collecting critical data on trainees, such as exit interviews, presentations, publications, and meeting attendance.
Information Architecture
Figure 1: Site map, Information Architecture
Features
| New Award Activation | Renewal Award Activation | Exit Survey | Email Notification |
| The system will auto-initiate and send email to the fellows 2 weeks after the new award gets activated. | The system will auto-initiate and send email notice to the fellows 2 weeks before the new award gets activated. | Emails will be automatically triggered for trainees based on the termination date. | Administrative officers assigned to the trainee will be copied on the IDP initiation and IDP Completion email notifications |
| Who initiate IDP? | Training Period | Inital Notification | Support multiple mentors |
| The IDP is primarily initiated by either the administrative officers (AO) or the Lab Managers at time of renewal. The trainees get notified that they will be renewed and provided with the training update plan as part of their package, However, for the incoming fellows, it is mostly initiated by the administrative officers (AO) as part of their appointment package. For DCEG, when the trainee comes on board, they are given an orientation session by the DCEG Office of Education and given 3 months to complete an initial IDP. If the fellows are getting renewed, the DCEG Office of Education initiates the annual IDP in January. | Post-Doctoral Fellows do IDP for 5 years max. Research Fellows also could fill out an IDP. So, IDP will be applicable for up to 8 years. The system should be flexible enough to allow a trainee to complete an IDP for any length of time as deemed appropriate. | The certifier is reminded about the upcoming anniversary date for trainee/fellows. The certifier initiates the renewal process, part of which is the IDP. For DCEG, the process to update IDP is separate from the FPS certifier process. The to-be system should be able to send notification to ensure a timely renewal process, part of which is the initiation of an IDP. | Across all the training organizations, the fellows might change their mentors from time to time. Fellow can have more than one mentor – a Primary mentor and Secondary mentors - in more than one project. Same is true in DCEG. The IDP is primarily for fellows and they have the option to share/not share the IDP with their mentors. However, the fellow use the progress report to describe their research project and discuss it with their mentors. |
Wireframe & Prototypes
Figure 2: Idea Brainstorm
Figure 3: Low Fidelity Prototype
User testing
User testing is a fundamental technique in user-centered interaction design, used to evaluate a product by observing how real users interact with it. This approach is an invaluable usability practice as it provides direct feedback on user behavior and system performance.
For our application, we implemented this technique with the following key tasks:
- Administrative Officer: Initiates the IDP process after onboarding a trainee.
- Trainee: Receives an email with a link, completes the IDP, and submits it.
- Mentor: Receives a notification to review the IDP.
- Mentor: Reviews the IDP and requests revisions or feedback from the trainee.
- Trainee: Reviews the feedback, makes adjustments or updates to the IDP, and submits it again.
- Mentor: Approves the finalized IDP and forwards it to the Training Director.
This structured process ensures a streamlined workflow and provides valuable insights into user interactions at each stage.
Final Design
Figure 4: Mobile View
Figure 5: Desktop View