ASSIST - Help Center
Help Center research and redesign for GSA that resulted in a 43% drop in help desk tickets submitted.
Role - Lead Product Designer & Researcher
Timeline - Q1 2025
Client - General Service Administration (GSA)
Case Study Overview
What is ASSIST?
ASSIST stands for “Assisted Serviced Information System” it’s a system used by GSA (General Service Administration) to manage various requests for materials, contracts, etc. for federal agencies and the US military.
GSA oversees about $102 billion in contracts across the federal government - which are managed through ASSIST.
ASSIST brings in $16.9 billion annually - about 50% of GSA’s overall revenue per year.
ASSIST handles all parts of the acquisition process, from RFP’s to contract signing.
ASSIST works with almost every government agency and every branch of the US Military
What is Help?
If users don’t know what the next step in progressing a contract in ASSIST, or need a refresher on Training - They go to Help. It is a document repository that requires constant updating and management from the GSA’s Help Desk team.
So... what is the problem with Help?
Three main problems plague the Help side of ASSIST - These problems were discovered through meetings with the product owners, as well as utilizing a user survey with 81 responses for the overall user impressions of ASSIST as a whole product.
Over 600+ documents w/ bad data - due to this Search is non-functional
Documents are PDF’s not web content pages - requiring users to download to view content.
Not 508 Compliant - and lack of accessibility for various user groups is creating a backlog.
The Solution
How did we get here?
Where do we begin?
Discovery work begins with the Help module through various interviews, and research methods. the jumping off point was given through three main sources.
Stakeholder & Product Owner Interviews
Sitting down to discuss their visions for the future, their concerns, etc.
User surveys
80+ responses received regarding the current state of ASSIST as a whole.
Interviews with Subject Matter Experts
Speaking with SME’s that were on the team that previously updated ASSIST and it’s Help module.
What did we learn?
The following quotes are some of the standout remarks from talking to various people
After Interviews - What do we do?
We interviewed and conducted lots of research from our three primary resources for information regarding help and how users feel about it.
We began to move into different research - like user flows (current), competitive benchmarking to figure out how industry standards handle Help centers, and revisiting flows to see how we can update the user flows based on said benchmarking research.
User Groups and Flows
After speaking with many users, SME’s and Stakeholders we identified four user groups that exist within Help, and were able to map out existing flows.
GSA Employees
GSA Clients
Contractors
GSA Help Desk
How does Access change depending on User?
There are two main flows on help once the user groups are separated out (Everyone else vs GSA Help Desk)
Non-Help Desk Flow
With a better understanding of what is wrong with ASSIST - as well as having access to ASSIST itself. I began creating the user flow for the current version of ASSIST at the time.
All users that aren’t part of the help desk (GSA employees, clients, and contractors) follow the same flow. The flow has been simplified and broken down for the sake of clarity.
Key for User Flow
Non-Help Desk Flow Cont.
What happens after search is very similar to what users face when they open help to begin with.
It’s a giant table catered to their search inquiry. This creates a lot of visual fatigue and makes users not want to navigate the help website.
Another crucial issue - is the presentation of the articles.
Titles are written as hyperlinks and when users click them they expect to be brought to a new window or webpage with the content they seek. What really happens is ASSIST downloads the document to their computer’s files.
Many users reported clicking the hyperlinks multiple times because they see nothing happening - and downloaded the same file multiple times by accident.
Help Desk Flow
Help Desk users have additional needs with Help in ASSIST.
They need to be able to
- Edit documents
- Delete documents
- Upload new documents
They have access to the Non-Help Desk User flow as well but for the sake of clarity only the help desk flow is shown in this section.
Benchmarking/Competitive Research
Once flows were understood and established - I conducted benchmarking and competitive research on 3 companies that have help article centers. This was to look at how they approach their own help centers on their webpages, and product lines. The takeaways from this research were crucial to the final design of Help.
How does Access change depending on User?
There are two main flows on help once the user groups are separated out (Everyone else vs GSA Help Desk)
Designing for Accessibility
How may we - Make Help and ASSIST in general 508 Compliant?
ASSIST was not made with accessibility in mind - one of the requirements from Product Owners, Stakeholders, and users in general is to update the entirety of ASSIST to be 508 Compliant.
In order to do this - and ensure that we’re automatically within 508 compliance the product design team decided to adapt the USWDS. A design system that was made for the federal government to ensure 508 compliance (which includes WCAG, and other standards). We used USWDS as a jumping off point for the ASSIST design system.
View Full ASSIST Design System
Final Designs
The final redesign for Help based off of all the research, interviews, and multiple iterations with the Product Owners, etc.
Impact & Reflection
The final redesign for Help based off of all the research, interviews, and multiple iterations with the Product Owners, etc.
